Michael Adams graduated from university during a recession. With job offers for new graduates scarce, he and two co-founders, David McFadden and John McNaughton, launched a company grounded in their academic interest in studying social issues. A subsequent partnership between Michael Adams and Derek Ruston helped Environics build its strength as a business. This balance – between curious exploration and commercial success – remains central to Environics’ culture.
One of Environics’ first major projects was an examination of public and professional thinking on obscenity in film. The Ontario Department of Tourism and Information commissioned the study to inform policy discussions on censorship.
Commencing our social values research program in Canada and around the globe in 1983, Environics became the first firm to bring social values measurement to Canada. The Environics Research Social Values measurement system measures the prevalence, growth, and decline of social values across society, as well as the concentration of values in particular social groups, such as youth or city-dwellers. Our annual surveys of thousands of Canadians let us measure and track social change over time. Since 1983, we’ve built the largest database of social values trends in North America, encompassing over 100 distinct constructs.
Environics Research celebrates 50 years of research insights and innovation.
Our co-founder Michael Adams was honoured in 2017 with an appointment to the Order of Canada for his leadership in public opinion research, and for his insights into Canadian values and identity.
Responding to growing public and government interest in environmental and natural resource issues, Environics launched the Environmental Barometer. This ongoing public opinion survey of Canadians has covered topics ranging from environmental regulation to pipeline construction.
We extended the Environics Research Social Values measurement system into the United States, developing the capacity to not only study American social change in its own right but to compare the United States to other societies, including Canada.
Introduced as part of the development of our Financial Services practice area, the Advisor Perception Study is the most comprehensive tool of its kind in Canada. Environics acquired the study in 1997 from its creator Dan Richards, in order to provide subscribers with an insider’s perspective of current trends and emerging forecasts for the future of the industry.
Sex in the Snow: The Surprising Revolution in Canadian Social Values was the first book by Environics founder Michael Adams describing findings from Environics social values research. A national bestseller, it argued that demography was not destiny – that values shape people’s lives and choices alongside characteristics like age or gender – it divided the Canadian population into 12 values segments across three generations: Elders, Baby Boomers, and Generation X.
Drawing on a decade of social values research conducted on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border, Michael Adams’s third book was Fire And Ice: The United States, Canada and the Myth of Converging Values. It argued that despite the two countries’ profound economic integration, their many historical, demographic and geographic similarities, and the ubiquity of American popular culture in Canada, Canadians and Americans increasingly saw the world differently.
Fire and Ice: The United States, Canada and the Myth of Converging Values won the 2003/2004 Donner Prize for Best Public Policy Book by a Canadian, praised as “an outstanding book that addresses a critical issue underlying many current policy arguments.” It was also selected by the Literary Review of Canada as one of the hundred most important books ever published in Canada.
To facilitate research work with the federal government and other public affairs clients in the National Capital Region, in 2003 we launched the Ottawa office of Environics Research. Our Ottawa team continues to deliver evidence-driven insights to government, NGOs, and the private sector on a wide range of issues.
