Using elderly data theoretically: personal life in 1949/1950 and individualisation theory

Abstract

The use of secondary data in sociological research has attracted much critique. For some commentators, problems are so severe that the use of secondary data is greatly compromised, perhaps best avoided. For others, these issues do not seem particularly severe and, sometimes, the objections seem misplaced. I review these problems and their resolutions, illustrated by my own research on personal life in 1949/1950 – which I undertook to assess the assumption of ‘traditional society’ made by individualisation theory. I conclude that the problems identified in using secondary data are actually problems inherent in any use of data. While these problems may be (but are not necessarily) more troublesome in secondary use, they can usually be overcome or accommodated. Instead of seeing secondary use of data as a problem in itself, we should rather evaluate how we can use data from any source, what they offer and how we can use them to answer particular research questions.

Keywords:

• secondary research
• elderly data
• individualisation
• personal life
• Mass Observation

Notes

1. The MO report remained unpublished at the time, although the final chapter drafts were subsequently published in Stanley’s Sex Surveyed (1995). The original drafts are held in the MO archive at the University of Sussex. These include editorial comments, notes and deletion, as well as much supplementary and supporting material, including the pilot, additional survey material, field notes, respondents’ original questionnaire responses (sometimes with letters attached) and additional ethnographic material.

2. A textbook on secondary research was published in 1988, and apparently Glaser (of grounded theory fame) saw the potential as early as 1962 (see Dale, Arber, & Procter, 1988; Glaser, 1962, 1963; Heaton, 2004; Thompson, 2000).

3. This was particularly marked in the pioneering study by Slater and Woodside of hospitalised soldiers and their wives between 1943 and 1946, which focuses on a psychoanalytic explanation of neuroticism (published as Patterns of Marriage: A Study of Marital Relationships in the Urban Working Class, 1951).

4. Although data might be simulated, or simply heuristic, and hence ‘made up’ in this sense.