TÁRKI Social Research Institute is an independent, employee-owned research organisation that specialises in policy research in the fields of social policy and the social consequences of economic policies. This includes related data-collection, archiving and statistical activities. They recently increased our involvement in the areas of strategic market research and health policy analysis. In addition, they regularly contribute to basic research, in the areas of social stratification and inequality, and to the methodology of empirical social research.

TÁRKI has 25 years of experience of empirical social science research in Hungary. Its background includes research on a wide range of issues related to social stratification, labour markets, income distribution, consumption and lifestyle patterns and attitudes, and it has increasingly focused on market research applications. There are various types of research activities that TÁRKI carries out for its clients, but social research is the most important part of its work. This includes:

• drafting consultancy and strategy papers for our clients (government agencies and private firms)
• developing software and producing microsimulation databases (e.g. on tax/benefit reforms, or modelling election results)
• carrying out surveys and producing research and monitoring reports (on savings, inflation expectations, business forecasts, social trends, etc.)
• carrying out political and general opinion polls on a wide variety of issues for a great number of different clients (the list of clients includes Hungarian and foreign central and local government agencies, corporations in various branches, such as banks, telecom companies and other trades, consultancy firms, international organisations, research and development funds, etc.)
• providing business-cycle research reports based on surveys of companies.

TÁRKI was active and successful in building up household and enterprise panel studies during the nineties. Its own Survey Unit, with its nationwide interviewer network, carries out several surveys a year, on both a national and a local level.
The TÁRKI Data Archive is the national digital social research archive for Hungary. It collects, stores and publishes a great number of surveys for the social science and business communities nationally and internationally.
TÁRKI is a member of various international research networks and consortia, including the IFDO, CESSDA, ICPSR, ISSP, ESS, LIS and ECPR, and they have contributed to a great number of international research efforts. Recently, TÁRKI, together with IVVM (former CVVM, Prague), CBOS (Warsaw) and PMCG (Brussels), founded the Central European Opinion Research Group (CEORG) to carry out joint, harmonised monthly omnibus surveys in the various countries.
TÁRKI's clients include various government agencies, research funds, international organisations and private companies in Hungary and internationally.
TÁRKI regularly publishes research reports in the form of working papers and summary books:

• The papers published in the Social Report series, launched in 1990 and since then published every other year, analyse the most significant social and economic trends in Hungarian society. The 1990 and 1998 editions of the series are available in both Hungarian and English, as is the most recent edition, covering 2004.
• The series entitled Changing Roles (Szerepváltozások) presents the social and economic status of Hungarian women and men since the end of the 1990s. This thematic publication, which is structured along the lines of the Social Report, is also published every two years. The first volume came out in 1997. The most recent, which is also available in English, covers 2005.
• TÁRKI's annual, cross-sectional survey (Household Monitor) has been going since 1998. Volumes in the series entitled TÁRKI Monitor Reports (TÁRKI Monitor Jelentések) appear regularly.