Henry William Durrant was a noted opinion pollster and market research

Market research

Market research is any organized effort to gather information about markets or customers. It is a very important component of business strategy...

er. Durant was responsible for esblishing several leading opinion poll and market research institutions including the British Institute of Public Opinion (BIPO), the Market Research Society and the European Society for Marketing and Opinion Research (he served as president between 1952 and 1954). Throughout his work he took a more serious and statisitcal approach to his work than some of his "rivals" and was critical of some of those using more qualitative methods such as those employed by "journalistic" Mass-Observation

Mass-Observation

Mass Observation was a United Kingdom social research organisation founded in 1937. Their work ended in the mid 1960s but was revived in 1981. The Archive is housed at the University of Sussex....

 studies of 1940s.

Personal life

He married Ruth Lazarus

Ruth Glass

Ruth Glass was a German-born British sociologist.Glass's work reflected her belief "that the purpose of sociological research was to influence government policy and bring about social change"...

in 1935 but they divorced in 1941. In 1945 he married his second wife, Margaret Collins, and together they had three daughters.