MLA Research Panel
The MLA Research Panel is an omnibus postal and online survey operated by Stratagem and our partners ComRes, a London-based polling company.
You submit the questions and we do all the number crunching and interpretation.
Use our MLA Research Panel to:
- Benchmark your organisation with MLAs;
- Gauge political opinion on your upcoming ideas and policies;
- Obtain evidence of how strongly individual political parties are supporting your cause;
- Demonstrate to your Board or Directors how your organisation is impacting with the Assembly.
As part of this service you will receive:
- A guarantee of at least 40 responses from MLAs across all main political parties and across all constituencies;
- A full analytical report interpreting the responses complete with graphs, bar charts and summary points;
- MLAs responses presented in data tables according to community designation, political party, region, date of birth, gender and new and returning MLAs;
- Assistance in the initial drafting of questions;
Organisations who submit questions to the Panel are not disclosed to MLAs, likewise the responses of individual MLAs are not disclosed. Our experience shows that the anonymity of self-competition surveys encourages parliamentarians to give their candid opinions on a policy issue or of an organisation.
Since 2007, we have supported a number of organisations across all sectors to measure and evaluate political opinion.
"The MLA Panel has been a really important piece of work for Age NI. It has allowed us to assess one of our key stakeholders' views on the work we undertake at Stormont. The answers to the questions we’ve asked have provided intelligence to help us in our policy and lobbying activity with parties and MLAs and to understand what works and doesn’t work for MLAs who we lobby. This exercise has been an important investment for Age NI."
-Duane Farrell, Director of Policy, Age NI
“The Stratagem/ComRes survey enabled me to develop an informed public affairs strategy for the Probation Board and put in place an engagement plan between senior management in Probation and local MLAs. We used the survey again to measure how effective that public affairs work had been. It was an extremely useful tool for our organisation and allows us to evaluate and monitor progress.”
-Gail McGreevy, Head of Communications, Probation Board for Northern Ireland
“The MLA survey allowed us to better focus our strategy for political engagement across the political parties. The audit provided us with a ‘think-piece’ of how our internal processes supported our external policy work and this objective analysis encouraged critical reflection about how we are developing our policy work”.
-Ursula O’Hare, Assistant Director, Law Centre NI