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I am unfamiliar with the British Library MO archive, but I have used the
Sussex 'Little Kinsey' archive. And yes, the ancillary material was as
informative as the survey itself (the final, cleaned-up chapter drafts were
reprinted in Liz Stanley's Sex Surveyed in 1995). This includes editorial
notes, comments and deletion (particularly of what was seen as salacious);
the pilot survey; field notes; respondents' attached letters; and some
ethnographic material on 'a homosexual group' and on 'lesbians'. Peter
Redman focusses on the limitations of the small, if illuminating, national
panel responses to two directives about sexual attitudes and behaviour. But
taking these together with the national 'street sample', the accompanying
postal surveys of 'opinion leaders' (clergymen, doctors and teachers),the
ancillary material, and also Geoffrey Gorer's almost contemporary and
parallel 1950 survey (published as Exploring English Character in 1955),
there is a mass of rich material on personal life in 1949/ 50.
Incidentally, while Peter helpfully highlights the problems of mediation,
both contemporary and present day, I think he is wrong about the MO editors'
missing some women's accounts of their dissatisfaction with sex and
marriage. If anything this seems overstressed, although I think Gorer does
this more than MO (he has pages of quotes and commentary on this). Possibly
this reflects a sort of 'simplified Freudianism' of the time, where sexual
satisfaction was seen as essential for personal happiness - particularly
strong in some of the other investigations of the time like Slater and
Woodsides' 1951 study of marital relationships.
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Simon Duncan
Professor in Comparative Social Policy
Centre for Applied Social Research
Ashfield Bldg.
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP, UK
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[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Dorothy Sheridan
Sent: 23 January 2013 10:52
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Subject: [MASSOBS] Re-use of MO Sex Survey material
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Dear all,
Just picked up a video from a session in December at the Open University's
Centre for Citizenship, Identity and Governance (CCIG) on the re-use of
data. It's Peter Redman talking about the hazards and benefits of
re-examining the 1949 Mass Observation "Little Kinsey" survey material.
Much of what he says has been said before about MO and statistical
representativeness and indeed, much of what he says, re-framed more
historiographically, could be (and should be) said about all re-use of data.
Link:
<http://www.open.ac.uk/ccig/media/peter-redman-on-mass-observation>
I hope he won't mind me saying that there is a slight tinge of "they were so
biased then but we know better now" to his presentation. Not that I disagree
with him entirely, but I feel he is very normative about how so-called
rigourous research should be done whereas I'd want to argue that much of
the pleasure and reward in reinterpreting social research data is grasping
the cultural and historical frames that have been used - whether it was done
in 1949 or in 2013. The evidence comes not just from the replies to the
survey questions themselves but from the whole contaxt of the survey - and
on those questions he is rather vague,. He was working from the microform
version in the British Library which must have been quite restrictive.
Anyway if this is your field, take a look. Sociologists might find it
helpful. It's just under half an hour long.
Dorothy Sheridan
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