Over the past 25 years, BRS has developed a unique approach to projects. A way of looking at the daily professional world we inhabit. We think of it as contemporary, not dusty tradition maintained by inertia. And our clients seem to appreciate it. Here are some of the hallmarks of our practice:

First, we see each project and its environment with fresh eyes. Always, something new and unique presents itself — the target audience has their own dynamics and idiosyncrasies, the competitive situation differs, the core idea attacks a market niche differently. Whatever it is, we come at it with thinking geared right to the issues at hand.

At the same time, we bring historical context to these efforts. That helps us moving into less charted terrain — we are better able to see how our combined and considerable experience can shape a study. Which techniques or methodologies are likely to work well here? Who must be in the sample, and how do we find them? What is reasonable to ask of our respondents? How can we expand the scope of what people can tell us? The depth? The candor? For us, Modern certainly means drawing on the past for perspective.

Part of Modern includes streamlining - no excess, no fluff. Whether we conduct two groups or 22, we put our resources where the potential is. Sometimes that means cutting a project down to size. Or breaking it into two pieces, so the second part can be done with greater knowledge. Streamlining means that we move through speculation and confusion to get at the truth.

Modern also applies to the way we report. Why is so much potentially exciting research so boring when presented, by the way? We think it's definitely Modern to get clients excited, inspired and motivated by research. We feel that way ourselves and have been fortunate enough to work for years with clients who share that feeling.

Finally, a couple of other dimensions are often considered part of Modern -skepticism and irony. Being skeptical is simply part of our nature. We take a variety of approaches to data gathering, often doubling back to a topic to cover it a different way with our respondents. We examine our own findings critically, identifying what we feel sure about and what we don't. One reason we think so positively about research is just because we are so open in our skepticism. As for irony, we save that for areas outside research like California politics and prime time television.