Ashworth will join the Research Methods Centre (RMC), its specialist unit on survey methodology.

He was previously head of evaluation at NatCen and experience in statistical problems in social and economic contexts. He also worked for more than 10 years at the Office for National Statistics (ONS), reading assistant deputy director level.

Ashworth was also head of quantitative research at the Centre for Research in Social Policy at Loughborough University.

Ashworth said: "I am delighted to be joining the Ipsos MORI Social Research Institute. With ever increasing amounts of data from diverse sources, these are exciting times for analytics."

Kelly Beaver, managing director of public affairs, said: "Karl will be leading our in-house team of data analysts and data scientists who specialise in working with social research, government administrative and economic data.  I have great confidence that he will take our analytical offer from strength to strength."