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Professor Sir Roger Jowell

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Roger Jowell, Research Professor and Director of the Centre for Comparative Social Surveys at City University, London, passed away on Christmas Day 2011. At our conference in Lausanne in July 2011 Roger was the first recipient of the ESRA Award for outstanding service to survey research. Roger entertained us all with his acceptance speech as well as imparting many wise words to younger researchers. The award was well-deserved as Roger’s contribution to survey research and statistics was immense.


Roger was a man of vision and energy. When he came up with the idea of a regular Europe-wide social attitudes survey, many thought his vision was unworkable. But his energy and determination ensured not merely that the idea became workable, but that it blossomed into a successful and important research resource. Roger chaired the European Science Foundation Committee that developed a blueprint for the European Social Survey. With colleagues from other institutions, he succeeded in obtaining European Union funding to get the survey up and running. He then became the survey’s Director, seeing it through the first ten years. Along the way, the ESS was awarded the prestigious Descartes Prize. The success of the ESS can be seen in many ways, not least the large number of presentations at each ESRA conference that have been based on ESS data.


But the ESS was not Roger’s first venture into cross-national social surveys. Back in 1984 he had been instrumental in setting up the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), which began as a four-country initiative but soon grew to include 48 nations. The programme had no funding whatsoever, but Roger’s seemingly unlimited supply of energy, persuasion and compliments proved sufficient to sustain it. The UK contribution to the ISSP was provided by the British Social Attitudes survey, another survey born of Roger’s vision and which has become a revered institution. The Times newspaper famously referred to BSA as “the Rolls Royce of surveys”. Roger directed the first eighteen surveys in the BSA series, a series which is still going strong, the 28th annual edition having recently been published.


Even further back, in 1969, Roger founded in London, along with Gerald Hoinville, an organisation called Social and Community Planning Research. Roger perceived a need for a high-quality social research institute that was neither driven by the profit motives of market research companies nor shackled by the bureaucracy of government. The need was proven and SCPR grew rapidly into the globally-respected organisation that it is today, now under the name of National Centre for Social Research (NatCen). Roger was Director of NatCen for more than 30 years, overseeing a myriad of developments in the survey world, nurturing generations of survey researchers, and ensuring that good survey research was routinely called upon as an important policy development tool.


Roger passionately believed that sound methodology is the bedrock of meaningful survey research. He not only demanded the highest standards of all NatCen surveys, but also sought every opportunity to extend methodological knowledge, not least through the activities of the SCPR Survey Methods Centre. Both the BSA and the ESS were set up not only to provide informative substantive data but also to showcase best methodological practice. In that sense, Roger’s surveys have acted as role models for many subsequent surveys. Roger also emphasised the link between methodological standards and ethics. He was the driving force behind the development of the International Statistical Institute’s declaration on professional ethics, adopted in 1985 and now a model for statistical societies and agencies around the world.


Roger was also a diligent and proactive member of many professional committees and groups. In the UK he served as Chair of the Social Research Association (which he had earlier co-founded), Council member and Vice-President of the Royal Statistical Society, Member of the Economic and Social Research Council Resources Board and, for three years until his death, Deputy Chair of the UK Statistics Authority. Internationally, he served on committees of the International Statistical Institute, European Science Foundation and International Association of Survey Statisticians.


In 2008 Roger was knighted by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II for services to social science. The institutions and surveys that Roger leaves behind are a fitting legacy. But most of all, Roger was a charming, witty, stimulating colleague and friend to many and an inspiration to the immeasurable number of people with whom he came into contact. He will be sorely missed.

Peter Lynn