According to a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers, the UK professional research and evidence market is a booming business and all indication are that it will continue to grow. It employs close to 73,000 highly-qualified people, generates up to £4.8bn a year of Gross Value Added (GVA), and makes a significant contribution to the UK.

The report titled The Business of Evidence 2016 has the following highlights:

• “There has been a definite shift towards so-called big data – very large data sets, often unstructured populations of comments and so on – rather than survey data. Social media analysis, data mining and predictive analytics are emerging as key skills but the problem is that the average company doesn’t have the staff who are au fait with these techniques.” Dr. Paul Baines, Cranfield University
• Data analytics exhibits the highest growth rate at over 350% since 2012
• Areas of growth: Qualitative research, data analytics, behavioural economics

The report that can be accessed here: https://www.pwc.co.uk/assets/pdf/business-of-evidence-report.pdf Compiled by Marie-Luce Kuhn