Mark Abrams

Mark Abrams (27 April 1906 – 25 September 1994) was a British social scientist and market research expert who pioneered new techniques in statistical surveying and opinion polling.

Background and education

Mark Abrams was born Max Alexander Abramowitz in Edmonton, North London in 1906 to Jewish parents who had emigrated from Lithuania and Latvia to the East End of London in the 1890s. He later described his father Abram Abramowitz, a journeyman bootmaker, shopkeeper, and house agent, as a 'philosophical anarchist'.

Abrams received a scholarship to attend The Latymer School, then read economics at the London School of Economics. He went on to complete a PhD in early modern English economic history under the supervision of R. H. Tawney in 1929.

Career

Between 1931 and 1933 Abrams was a research fellow at the progressive Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. In 1933 he joined the research department of the London Press Exchange, one of Britain's leading advertising agencies. Here Abrams began developing his pioneering work in social investigation, market research, and opinion polling by conducting large-scale statistical surveys into consumer behaviour. His national newspaper readership surveys, which included over 20,000 participants between 1934 and 1938, were landmarks in survey research and were credited with establishing the widespread use of the ABC1 system of social classification in Britain. Abrams's contacts with other social scientists working abroad during this period led to his work retrieving refugees from Nazi Europe (in 1939 helping Sigmund Freud make his final move to England).

During World War II Abrams was employed first in the BBC
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