Mass-Observation: Britain in the Second World War

Edited and Introduced by: Sandra Koa Wing
Publisher: The Folio Society, 2007
Condition: Hardcover, no dust jacket, minor wear and foxing to edges, interior clean
Mass-Observation was a United Kingdom social research organisation founded in 1937. Their work ended in the mid-1960s and the archive is housed at the University of Sussex.

Mass-Observation aimed to record everyday life in Britain through a panel of around 500 untrained volunteer observers who either maintained diaries or replied to open-ended questionnaires (known as directives). They also paid investigators to anonymously record people's conversation and behaviour at work, on the street and at various public occasions including public meetings and sporting and religious events.

Mass-Observation has been criticised by some as an invasion of privacy. Participants were not only reporting on their own lives; they often commented on their neighbours and friends as well. Such an atmosphere of surveillance was in keeping with the rising culture of espionage, which dominated the Second World War, although Mass-Observation was an independent, not a government, effort aimed at education rather than manipulation of the public.

Mass-Observation had set out to turn the tools of anthropology used to study foreign cultures to study Britain's: to be "The Science of Us." Criticism of the scientific validity focusing on the experimental parameters began fairly early, continued throughout its existence, and was a key element in its eventual demise. Because of the self-selecting nature of the observers, they did not represent a scientifically balanced cross-section of British society as a modern public opinion poll would. Although geographically and occupationally diverse, the participants tended to be middle-class, educated, literate, and left of centre.