The Avon Pension Fund has confirmed that it will be surveying members on whether the fund should continue investing in aerospace and defence companies, with the findings set to help inform the committee's final decision on this issue later this year. 

The group announced that it will be surveying members during the first two weeks of September, with around 20,000 randomly selected members (around 20 per cent of scheme membership) to receive an email inviting them to take part in the research.

The fund is hoping to receive at least 1,000 survey responses from these members, which it said will deliver statistically robust survey results to help inform the Pension Committee when it makes its decision on investments in aerospace and defence later this year. 

It explained that polling all members would cost much more without yielding materially more statistically robust results.

Prevision Research has been appointed by the fund to design the survey, analyse the data, and present findings.

As part of this work, the agency has also been tasked with ensuring that responses are representative of the total Fund membership by age and gender, in particular ensuring that smaller groups (at each end of the age range) are fairly represented. 

To aid with this, survey findings will be weighted to ensure that members responding have the same demographic profile as the actual membership. 

Only members randomly selected to receive the invitation can participate in the survey, and pension fund staff, committee and board members will not be included.

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