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Our public opinion journey so far

Explore CaSE’s work exploring public attitudes since 2019 below.

About CaSE’s public opinion work

Through our public opinion work, CaSE is helping R&D advocates to connect with a broader group of public and political supporters.

For R&D to become a collective national mission, advocates need a clear and compelling narrative about why R&D stands alongside other worthy political and societal priorities.

Since 2019, CaSE has been exploring public opinion towards R&D, and using these insights to develop evidence-led advocacy guidance and tools. This page sets out the details of that journey, which underpin CaSE’s public opinion work today.

Our approach

Understanding audiences

Using nationally-representative polling, focus groups and deliberative methods to explore public attitudes to R&D, covering all disciplines, all R&D sectors and all parts of the UK.

Developing advocacy tools

Distilling our findings into evidence-led advocacy guidance and tools, that set out the terminology, messages and messengers who can help connect with new audiences.

Catalysing adoption

Working closely with advocates from all parts of the R&D sector – including universities, businesses, charities and public engagement organisations – to put new advocacy tactics into practice.

2021-2024

Discovery Decade programme

CaSE’s Discovery Decade programme ran from 2021 to the end of 2024. It was supported by a grant from Wellcome, and delivered by a dedicated team within CaSE, led by Ben Bleasdale.

The Discovery Decade programme was designed as an experiment, to see how public opinion research could play a role in R&D advocacy. With 40 years of history as a political-facing voice for R&D, and a membership that spans the whole R&D sector, CaSE provided the ideal space to trial this new approach.

The programme involved extensive audience research, including a series of nationally-representative polls covering 30,000 people in total, 20 focus groups and a public dialogue exercise. The team then worked to distill the resulting insights into evidence-led advocacy guides and tools, designed to help R&D advocates convey a more compelling narrative to public and political audiences.

Many of the work’s outputs were put to use during the 2024 UK General Election, where CaSE delivered a major public-centred engagement campaign – reaching out to almost 4,000 parliamentary candidates ahead of the election, and following up with 650 bespoke information booklets for each Westminster MP. By drawing on our first-of-its-kind constituency-level map of public opinions towards R&D, we were able to nurture a broader cohort of champions for R&D in the new Parliament.

CaSE is now building on this work through a new programme, funded by five-year grant from Wellcome, with a strong focus on people, purpose and place. 

2019-2020

Earlier work

CaSE’s public opinion activities were sparked through a collaboration between CaSE and Wellcome, on the R&D Decade project in 2019 and 2020. Supported by policy specialists Public First, this project explored how the R&D community could best secure government investment over the following ten years.

The project reviewed the R&D sector’s advocacy options, explored advocacy approaches adopted by other sectors, and consolidated this into a set of potential advocacy strategies available to the R&D community. A series of reports were published, which you can explore below – these set out the evidence collected and the recommendations offered.

Let’s work together

CaSE is the leading independent voice for UK R&D. We are a charity supported by a diverse membership including businesses, universities, professional bodies, research charities and individual members.