German Institute for Public Polls
The German Institute for Public Polls (Divo) was a German polling institute based in Frankfurt am Main .
The institute, founded in 1951, emerged from the Opinion Survey Section of the Office of Military Government for Germany , which was established in 1945 and was the first opinion research institute in the Federal Republic of Germany alongside the IfD Allensbach . The strategy of the American administration was to establish survey research in Germany. To support this, German interviewers were used from the beginning and the staff was trained by American scientists with experience in survey research. The institute contributed to the dissemination of methodological skills in Germany. There was a similar foundation in the British occupation zone, from which Emnid later emerged. The founders of Infas were also trained at Divo.
In addition to political and election research , the institute was also active in market research , where it achieved a significant market position with orders from German and international companies. Customers included Coca-Cola , Colgate-Palmolive , Royal Dutch Shell and Nestlé .
The Divo was known for precise forecasts of economic trends and had also forecast federal election results with a deviation of 0.4 percent.
In 1961, the French Sema, a subsidiary of the Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas , took over fifty percent of the shares. The other half later went to the Berliner Handels-Gesellschaft . When the owner changed, the management was also replaced. The new managing director, the Frenchman Michel Algen, realigned the institute, relying on computer programming and production control instead of the previous field of activity of market research. As a result of the realignment, old business relationships were lost and a high level of staff turnover set in, especially in company management. In autumn 1969, the institute had to dismiss the entire interview staff of 600 people for economic reasons. Michel Algen left the company and joined the supervisory board of Sema. He was succeeded by Claude Iégy.
The institute later operated as the Institute for Economic Research, Social Research and Applied Mathematics .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jochen Groß: The prognosis of election results. Approaches and empirical performance . VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2010, ISBN 978-3-531-17273-6 , p. 33 .
- ↑ Irmela Schneider: strategies of datum. Volume 2. transcript Verlag, 2007, ISBN 3899427424 , p. 185.
- ↑ a b c future hidden. In: Der Spiegel . Retrieved October 29, 2016.