- Welcome
- Important notice
- About the author
- About this site
- Site guide + Search box
- Dedications
- Acknowledgments
- My personal pantheon (of the great and the good in survey research)
- Recent and planned activities
- Textbooks for Research Methods and Data Analysis
- 1: Survey Analysis Workshop (SPSS)
- 1a: Statistical concepts and methods
- 1b: Teaching with Survey Data
- 1c: Developing research projects using survey data
- 1d: Workshop and presentations for ASSESS (SPSS users in Europe)
- 2: Survey Research Practice
- 2a: Survey Research Methodology, Practice and Training
- 2b: Major survey series
- 3: Subjective Social Indicators (Quality of Life)
- 4: Survey Unit, Social Science Research Council (UK)
- 5a: Polytechnic of North London (1976-1992)
- 5b: Survey Research Unit (1978-1992)
- Village life in Normandy
- Contact
- Origins of the British Crime Survey
- British Crime Survey
John F Hall: Career profile
[Page last updated 24 May 2018]
John has more than 50 years' experience conducting empirical social research (especially survey research) and teaching social research methods. He studied first, Classics, then Social Anthropology, at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge (BA Hons, 1963) and has a postgraduate Diploma in Education (Durham University 1964).
After a year teaching Liberal Studies (to apprentices in engineering trades) and O-level English, at Openshaw Technical College, Manchester, he started his research career as a survey interviewer at Salford University in 1965, where he conducted more than 1,000 face-to-face and depth interviews, wrote one of the very first suites of general purpose computer programs (in KDF9 Algol) to process and analyse data from the survey, and ended up running the entire project.
In 1968 he moved to Birmingham University as a (tenured) Lecturer to provide the social science component of a new MSc in Urban Science. In 1970 he was appointed Senior Research Fellow (the first full time post, equivalent to Reader) at the new SSRC Survey Unit. This unit, directed by the late Dr Mark Abrams, and located "at, but not of", the LSE, was set up by the then Social Science Research Council (now the Economic and Social Research Council) to advise and assist academics and others doing survey based research on public funds. It also carried out surveys for Council and had an in-house programme of substantive and methodological research to develop subjective social indicators (survey-based measures of "Quality of Life") for use with general populations.
When SSRC controversially closed the unit in 1976 he moved to the then Polytechnic of North London (now incorporated into London Metropolitan University) to design and head up the first (and only ever) UK undergraduate degree in Social Research, and where, in 1978, he set up a new Survey Research Unit, which he and others saw as an uninterrupted continuation of the SSRC Survey Unit, with virtually the same terms of reference.
Acknowledged by Dr Abrams as moving "easily and widely in the world of social science" (ie on first name terms with the great and the good in UK, Europe, USA and Canada) in the 1970s he was one of the few UK social scientists equally at home with colleagues drawn from backgrounds in sociology, psychology, statistics and computing. He has extensive and varied publications and has conducted or supervised dozens of projects (mostly, but not exclusively surveys) ranging from small local to major national studies.
He was internationally recognised for his pioneering work in the 1970s with Mark Abrams to develop survey-based Subjective Social Indicators (Quality of Life) In 1981 he played a brokerage role in setting up the first British Crime Survey (now Crime Survey for England & Wales and was later commissioned to convert the Home Office files to SPSS format and produce the User Manual:
J F Hall and A M Walker,
User Manual for First British Crime Survey 1982,
(PNL, 1985)
In 1986 he set up and chaired the judging panel for the Mark Abrams Prize awarded by the Social Research Association for "the best piece of work linking survey research, social theory and/or social policy."
He is particularly associated with the highly respected and much sought-after (practice-oriented, post-graduate, hands-on, part-time, evening) courses Survey Analysis Workshop (SPSS) which he designed and taught from 1976 until he took early retirement in 1992 and the sister course Survey Research Practice, taught entirely by guest lecturers who were senior survey practitioners.
He was instrumental in the rapid spread of SPSS in the UK and set up and chaired the UK SPSS Users Group (UKSUG) He served on various research methods and training committees and panels of the Social Science Research Council, British Sociological Association, Market Research Society, Royal Town Planning Institute and the Study Group on Computers in Survey Analysis (forerunner of the Association for Survey Computing).
Through his research, advisory and training work, first at the SSRC Survey Unit (1970 - 1976) and the Survey Research Unit at the Polytechnic of North London (1976 - 1992) he can claim dozens of satisfied clients and hundreds of grateful students, many of whom are now following successful careers in social research. Of the students he taught and of the researchers he recruited to the SSRC Survey Unit or to the Survey Research Unit at PNL, many went on to occupy senior positions in applied social research in the UK: at least nine became full Professors in UK universities. He specialised in advisory, design and collaborative work, getting value for money and in "rescue jobs", and was an acknowledged expert in data management, documentation and analysis using SPSS.
He moved to France in 1994, and, after a fallow period, returned to the social science scene in 2001 with a critical review of the best-selling textbook, SPSS Survival Manual (Julie Pallant, 2001). Finding himself with an unexpired 5-year licence for SPSS for Windows he began restoring and updating his research materials, culminating in his 2006 presentation to ASSESS (SPSS users in Europe) Old Dog, Old Tricks. This covered the origins and development of SPSS, changes in syntax from 1969 to 2006, and included a critical examination of the use of SPSS in Pallant and in major surveys. He spent the next three years retrieving and restoring his research and teaching materials, converting them from WordStar to Word and from SPSS-X to SPSS for Windows. Having always toyed with the idea of developing a website, quite by chance in 2009, he came across a fellow ex-pat early retiree living in the same village. Terry Blom had been IT Manager at Natwest Bank and was looking for a "small winter project": the rest is history and has resulted in Journeys in Survey Research a major, internationally acclaimed, web-base resource for social (survey) research. The site contains (not easily available, if at all) materials from half-a-century of survey research, reviews of survey methods and SPSS textbooks and links to dozens of valuable on-line resources.
John has more than 50 years' experience conducting empirical social research (especially survey research) and teaching social research methods. He studied first, Classics, then Social Anthropology, at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge (BA Hons, 1963) and has a postgraduate Diploma in Education (Durham University 1964).
After a year teaching Liberal Studies (to apprentices in engineering trades) and O-level English, at Openshaw Technical College, Manchester, he started his research career as a survey interviewer at Salford University in 1965, where he conducted more than 1,000 face-to-face and depth interviews, wrote one of the very first suites of general purpose computer programs (in KDF9 Algol) to process and analyse data from the survey, and ended up running the entire project.
In 1968 he moved to Birmingham University as a (tenured) Lecturer to provide the social science component of a new MSc in Urban Science. In 1970 he was appointed Senior Research Fellow (the first full time post, equivalent to Reader) at the new SSRC Survey Unit. This unit, directed by the late Dr Mark Abrams, and located "at, but not of", the LSE, was set up by the then Social Science Research Council (now the Economic and Social Research Council) to advise and assist academics and others doing survey based research on public funds. It also carried out surveys for Council and had an in-house programme of substantive and methodological research to develop subjective social indicators (survey-based measures of "Quality of Life") for use with general populations.
When SSRC controversially closed the unit in 1976 he moved to the then Polytechnic of North London (now incorporated into London Metropolitan University) to design and head up the first (and only ever) UK undergraduate degree in Social Research, and where, in 1978, he set up a new Survey Research Unit, which he and others saw as an uninterrupted continuation of the SSRC Survey Unit, with virtually the same terms of reference.
Acknowledged by Dr Abrams as moving "easily and widely in the world of social science" (ie on first name terms with the great and the good in UK, Europe, USA and Canada) in the 1970s he was one of the few UK social scientists equally at home with colleagues drawn from backgrounds in sociology, psychology, statistics and computing. He has extensive and varied publications and has conducted or supervised dozens of projects (mostly, but not exclusively surveys) ranging from small local to major national studies.
He was internationally recognised for his pioneering work in the 1970s with Mark Abrams to develop survey-based Subjective Social Indicators (Quality of Life) In 1981 he played a brokerage role in setting up the first British Crime Survey (now Crime Survey for England & Wales and was later commissioned to convert the Home Office files to SPSS format and produce the User Manual:
J F Hall and A M Walker,
User Manual for First British Crime Survey 1982,
(PNL, 1985)
In 1986 he set up and chaired the judging panel for the Mark Abrams Prize awarded by the Social Research Association for "the best piece of work linking survey research, social theory and/or social policy."
He is particularly associated with the highly respected and much sought-after (practice-oriented, post-graduate, hands-on, part-time, evening) courses Survey Analysis Workshop (SPSS) which he designed and taught from 1976 until he took early retirement in 1992 and the sister course Survey Research Practice, taught entirely by guest lecturers who were senior survey practitioners.
He was instrumental in the rapid spread of SPSS in the UK and set up and chaired the UK SPSS Users Group (UKSUG) He served on various research methods and training committees and panels of the Social Science Research Council, British Sociological Association, Market Research Society, Royal Town Planning Institute and the Study Group on Computers in Survey Analysis (forerunner of the Association for Survey Computing).
Through his research, advisory and training work, first at the SSRC Survey Unit (1970 - 1976) and the Survey Research Unit at the Polytechnic of North London (1976 - 1992) he can claim dozens of satisfied clients and hundreds of grateful students, many of whom are now following successful careers in social research. Of the students he taught and of the researchers he recruited to the SSRC Survey Unit or to the Survey Research Unit at PNL, many went on to occupy senior positions in applied social research in the UK: at least nine became full Professors in UK universities. He specialised in advisory, design and collaborative work, getting value for money and in "rescue jobs", and was an acknowledged expert in data management, documentation and analysis using SPSS.
He moved to France in 1994, and, after a fallow period, returned to the social science scene in 2001 with a critical review of the best-selling textbook, SPSS Survival Manual (Julie Pallant, 2001). Finding himself with an unexpired 5-year licence for SPSS for Windows he began restoring and updating his research materials, culminating in his 2006 presentation to ASSESS (SPSS users in Europe) Old Dog, Old Tricks. This covered the origins and development of SPSS, changes in syntax from 1969 to 2006, and included a critical examination of the use of SPSS in Pallant and in major surveys. He spent the next three years retrieving and restoring his research and teaching materials, converting them from WordStar to Word and from SPSS-X to SPSS for Windows. Having always toyed with the idea of developing a website, quite by chance in 2009, he came across a fellow ex-pat early retiree living in the same village. Terry Blom had been IT Manager at Natwest Bank and was looking for a "small winter project": the rest is history and has resulted in Journeys in Survey Research a major, internationally acclaimed, web-base resource for social (survey) research. The site contains (not easily available, if at all) materials from half-a-century of survey research, reviews of survey methods and SPSS textbooks and links to dozens of valuable on-line resources.