- 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
Latest additions and modifications
November - December 2019
Rebuild site after catastrophic broken links: restoration of links to always Open in New Window
July 2019
New page SRU Student publications
Papers added:
Patricia Orwell and Angela Whitcher
The Cost of Volunteering: a pilot survey of volunteers' out-of-pocket expenses and insurance
(The Volunteer Centre, 1980)
Roger Blackwell
A Survey of Foster Parents in Camden
(Camden Association for Foster Care, 1983)
Alison Walsh and Ruth Lister
Mother's Life-Line a survey of how women use and value child benefit
(Child Poverty Action Group, 1985)
June 2019
Papers added:
Mark Abrams Middle Class Socialists
(Encounter, March, 1975)
Mark Abrams Social Indicators 1971-1975
(WAPOR,session: Economic Policy Research & Social Indicators,, 3 September 1975)
April - May 2019
Three new modules:
Stage 1: 3.2.1.5 Earnings differences 2009: Download and check file
(Preparation for replication of 3.2.1.1 Earnings differences – Elaboration using data from 2009)
Stage 2: 3.2.1.6_Earnings_differences_2009:_Extracting_and_saving_selected_variables
(Preparation for replication of 3.2.1.1 Earnings differences – Elaboration using data from 2009)
Stage 3: 3.2.1.7 Earnings differences 2009: Elaboration
bsa1983to2017zerocases.sav [download to be saved on your computer]
. . .is an SPSS "mother" saved file containing no cases: it can be used to make metadata mutually compatible for any or all waves of the British Social Attitudes Survey from 1983 to 2017.
Downloading BSAS data from the U K Data Service is a new tutorial detailing the process needed to register and download data for the British Social Attitudes Survey (BSAS) from the UK Data Service
VSPICE 1983 questionnaire for Values and Social Problem Indicators in Contemporary Europe (VSPICE)
SR502: Survey Research Practice course programme and handouts
SR501: Survey Analysis Workshop course programme for 1991-92
December 2018
New page Textbooks for Research Methods and Data Analysis makes it easier to find books, reviews, comments and on-line resources from a single page.
David C Howell (1941 - 2018) retired in 2002 as Chair of Psychology at Vermont.
Book: Fundamental Statistics for the Behavioural Sciences 8th edition
Companion website: Fundamental Statistics for the Behavioural Sciences
His website contains a wealth of material including:
Statistical Methods for Psychology
Outline of the Statistical Pages Folder covering t-tests, chi-square, regression, R and much more.
his personally revamped SPSS Manuals
The Longer Manual
The Shorter Manual
and links to some Great Web Sites (worth exploring, but some may no longer exist,)
October 2018
New guide added 22 October 2018
Downloading British Social Attitudes Survey (BSAS) data from the UK Data Service (pdf, 13pp, 914kb)
September 2018
New article added 28 September 2018
BSAS 2016: On the Trail of the Lonesome Nine(s) (pdf, 24pp, 648kb)
New page
British Social Attitudes: Making files from different years compatible)
New papers
British Social Attitudes Survey 1983 onwards: Date of interview [pdf, 4pp, 97kb]
BSAS 2016: On the Trail of the Lonesome Nines [pdf, 25pp, 649mb]
July 2018
Revised paper
Patterns of individual responses on 0-10 scales
Revised and new versions of guides to video tutorials for chapter 4 of MacInnes (2017)
4.1.5 Guide to video tutorials 7 and 8
4.1.6 Guide to video tutorial 9
4.1.7 Guide to video tutorials 10 and 11
4.2.1_Exercise_answer_videos_1-6
4.2.2 Exercise answer video 7
4.2.3 Exercise answer video 8 (new)
4.2.4_Answer_ exercise_9 (new)
4.2.5_Answer_ exercise_10 (new)
June 2018
Minor re-organisation of menus to move SPSS textbooks and Survey methods textbooks to main menu.
March 2018
Link to winning submission for Mark Abrams Prize 2005
Lucinda Platt
Making education count: the effects of ethnicity and qualifications on intergenerational social class mobility
Later published in The Sociological Review, Vol 55, No 6, August 2007 pp 485-508
February 2018
Review of:
Ronn J Hy
Using the Computer in the Social Sciences
(Elsevier ,1977)
New SPSS tutorial:
3.3.3.4 Analysing multiple response 4 - Dichotomous mode
New paper added:
David R Phillips
Do-it-yourself surveys: a handbook for beginners
Survey Research Unit, Polytechnic of North London, April 1980
[pdf, 115 pp, scanned 12 Jan 2018 ]
January 2018
Marsh C 1975
Job Satisfaction: the Search Goes On
Paper to UK/USA SSRC Conference on Subjective Measures of Quality of Life, Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge
SSRC Survey Unit, September, 1975
New guides/commentaries for MacInnes (2017)
4.1.6 Guide to video tutorial 9
4.1.7 Guide to video tutorials 10 and 11
December 2017
New link
Svend Juul et al Take good care of your data
November 2017
New document
Beverly Rowe, John Hall and Marianne Scheer
Computer Software for Survey Analysis
Special supplement in SSRC Newsletter 29, November 1975. Revised consolidation of 1973 and 1974 lists.
New page James A Davis (1929-2016)
Founder of the NORC General Social Survey
New commentary
Macinnes_4.2.1_exercise_answer_videos_1-6_for_chapter_4.pdf
September 2017
New page with details of post-grad course Survey Research Practice (1976 - 1992)
August 2017
Modifications and additions to page:
SSRC Survey Unit Quality of Life in Britain Surveys 1971 - 1975
New paper:
SPSS_files_for_British_Social_Attitudes_wave 32_(2011)_a_cautionary_tale_for_the_unwary
Commentaries on MacInness book
4.1.1 Overview of video tutorials 1 to 6
4.1.2 Downloading the European Social Survey Practice File
4.1.3 Downloading the SPSS syntax
4.1.4_Checking_the_SPSS_files
5.1.1 Downloading the full ESS6 dataset & documentation
5.1.2 Identifying the missing cases on [cldgng]
5.1.3 Creating a numeric version of country
5.1.4 Selecting cases and using the COUNT command
5.1.5_Using_COMPUTE_to_create_new_variables
More to come as and when
June 2017
MacInnes (2017) Comments on, and user guides for, MacInnes book:
Aide-mémoire for easier navigation of companion website
May 2017
Link to new book:
John MacInnes’ An Introduction to Secondary Data Analysis with IBM SPSS Statistics. (Sage 2017)
April 2017
Link to latest OECD Guidelines for Measuring Subjective Well-being (2016)
Link to ESRC what works wellbeing site
Link to Public value of crime and justice statistics in the UK (Office for Statistics Regulation, April 2017).
February 2017
New page Dedication and acknowledgments
Revised version of 3.2.1.1 Elaboration 1 (Income differences BSA 1989)
January 2017
New Paper:
Hall J F (2017)
Patterns of individual responses on 0-10 scales used to measure satisfaction and other well-being constructs, a comparison of usage in different surveys (pdf 32pp) examines the use of 0—10 scales in selected surveys and demonstrates variations in individual response patterns.
Link to excellent tutorial:
McLeod, S. A. (2016). Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. on the Simply Psychology site.
December 2016
British Social Attitudes: cumulative SPSS "mother" file for all waves 1983-2014 has now been deposited with UKDS. All requests for access should be made via ESDS on [email protected].
November 2016
New link: Schwarz, S A Proposal for Measuring Value Orientations across Nations
September 2016
Updated and fuller information on page Surveys by SSRC Survey Unit now includes links to holdings at UK Data Service at Essex University.
August 2016
Linton, Dieppe & Medina-Lara
Review of 99 self-report measures for assessing well-being in adults: exploring dimensions of well-being and developments over time
(BMJ Open, July 2016)
Programming and Data Management for IBM SPSS Statistics 23: A Guide for IBM SPSS Statistics and SAS Users (New edition: SPSS Inc.,2015)
New tutorials on page 3.2 Three (or more) variables
3.2.1.2 Elaboration 2 (Income differences BSA 2009 - 2014)
Selection and extraction of variables from mother file; selecting years 2009 to 2014 only; tidy up metadata; derived variables; check contents of file; frequency counts.
3.2.1.3 Elaboration 3 (Income differences 2009 – 2014_CROSSTABS)
Zero order 2-way contingency tables
3.2.1.4 Elaboration 4 (Income differences 2009 – 2014_CTABLES)
1st, 2nd etc order (multi-way) contingency tables New tutorials on Elaboration using data from the 2009 - 2014 British Social Attitudes Survey to examine differences in the earnings of men and women from paid work.
July 2016
Post Brexit trip to Paris has video clips of view from the top of the Tour Montparnasse (higher than the Eiffel Tower) and a trip on the river Seine
June 2016
Following intensive work on the SPSS files for British Social Attitudes, there is now a beta version of a cumulative file containing all waves from 1983 to 2014. I have moved page British Social Attitudes to the main menu and created two new sub-pages British Social Attitudes: Exploring the SPSS files and British Social Attitudes 1983 to 2014: Cumulative SPSS file
May 2016
A couple of papers of historical interest:
The Social Ecology of Urban Renewal (Hall J F 1972, 14pp) is a proposal for secondary analysis of the 1964-65 Salford Work and Home surveyf prepared for a series of seminars on Survey Research and Social Theory chaired by Morris Janowitz (Chicago). It's in very poor quality pdf format, scanned years ago on a cheap Dell scanner (almost line-by-line) but is legible.
A general data-processing package (Hall J F 1968) describes an Algol program I developed from 1965 to 1968 on the English Electric KDF9 computer at the Royal College of Advanced Technology, Salford (input and output on 8-hole paper tape: later modified to run on an English Electric PDP11 at Birmingham University). It was maintained as the Salford Survey Suite until 1979 when, in view of the wide availability of SPSS, I advised it be discontinued.
April 2016
New documents (18 April):
British Social Attitudes 1983 to 2014_Resolution of type conflicts
British Social Attitudes 1983-2014_ Beta version of cumulative file
Excellent new guides from UKDS
What is SPSS 20 for Windows?
Using Survey Data
My initial accounts of the work (still in progress) and problems encountered to combine data from the separate waves of British Social Attitudes into a single files are listed below:
:
1983 onwards
British Social Attitudes 1983-2014 _Constructing cumulative files
2009 to 2014
British Social Attitudes 2009 - 2014 Measurement levels
British Social Attitudes 2009 to 2014 _ Missing values
British Social Attitudes 2009 to 2014 _ Multiple response
British Social Attitudes 2009 to 2014 _ Variable and value labels
March 2016
New page
Exploring British Social Attitudes
New tutorials
Exploring British Social Attitudes 2014 a set of notes based on initial exploration of the SPSS file distributed by UKDS (Essex) and written from the perspective of someone wishing to use the survey for teaching data management and analysis in a hands-on environment.
Cautionary tale for the unwary specifically demonstrates the importance of checking data before generating attitude score.
3.3.3.3 Analysing multiple response exercise 3 - More replies than values [added 5 March 2016]
Using a question about welfare benefits received, this exercise demonstrates how to handle a question in which the same code values 1 - 6 are repeated within a set of 12 responses to the same question (but in different fields). This involves recoding the second set of values, but needs great care whn dealing with missing values.
January 2016
Maureen Ashman (Senior Programmer responsible for SPSS at PNL) re-emerges after 20 years.
December 2015
Captain Ralph M Schwartz (Field hospital, July 1944)
Live stream recording of the 2015 RSS Cathie Marsh Memorial Lecture What does the failure of the polls tell us about the future of survey research?
November 2015
[New page] How to use this site,
includes link to new document Guide to page and pop-out menus [pdf 21 pages]
[New page] Opinion polls
[New link] British Polling Council
[New entries on page United Kingdom (Major survey series: academic and other)]
British Election Study
Crime Survey for England & Wales (previously British Crime Survey)
October 2015
[New page] Developing research projects using survey data
September 2015
Amendments to Pantheon, including obituaries of Claus Moser (died 5 Sep 2015: see Guardian obituary)
and Muriel Nissel (editor Social Trends: died 1989)
August 2015
War and Peace
New section on local villages during the Nazi occupation, on D-Day, and on their liberation by the US 2nd Armored Division
July 2015
Count Us In: New report from British Academy
May 2015
Educational Project Overcoming Statistics anxiety (EPOS) is a research project at the University of Leuven and contains various reports on course construction and content, experience of teachers and students etc.
New upload (restored by scans and MS Snips)
Hall & Ring 1974
Indicators of Environmental Quality and Life-Satisfaction: a subjective approach
Paper to International Sociological Association Research Committee 26 Perceptions of Environmental Quality and Measuring the Quality of Life. 8th World Congress, Toronto, 1974
New pages:
SN 7146: ONS Opinions Survey, Well‐Being Module, April 2011
SN 28: Relative Deprivation and Social Justice 1962-63
April 2015
Links to Esther Leerkes and David C Howell SPSS mini-manuals
The Longer Manual
The Shorter Manual
(written for beginners as guides to the main manual) and to David Howell's teaching materials from University of Vermont Web Page Materials for Statistical Methods for Psychology, 8th ed.
Response to 2001 ESRC Green paper on Data Policy and Archiving
Sad news of death on 2nd April (at his home in Sun Valley, Idaho) of Norman Nie, co-author with Dale Bent and Tex Hull of Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) 1970.
New link to impressive MANTRA site (Edinburgh) for data management and anlyisis. Also new tutorial Data Handling Using SPSS 19 by Laine Ruus (2014)
March 2015
Review of
David de Vaus
Surveys in Social Research
(6th edition, Routledge, 2014)
New (draft) visual aid for teaching underlying idea behind regression and correlation
4.5.1 Visual aid for regression and correlation
Major re-organisation of menus and pages.
New page Workshop and presentations for ASSESS (SPSS users in Europe)
Alan Reifman's list of Summer Statistics and Methods courses for 2015
January 2015
Review of
Johnny Blair, Ronald F. Czaja, Edward A. Blair
Designing Surveys: A Guide to Decisions and Procedures
(Sage 2014)
December 2014
New page: Survey Research and Social Action
November 2014
Review of
Lesley Andres
Designing and Doing Survey Research
(Sage 2012)
October 2014
ASSESS 2014: Links to Contents
Slide-shows
This site won't accept files in MS Office *. ppt format: they have to be converted first. You can see the slide-shows for my workshop and presentation sessions for ASSESS (York) via my academia.edu page.
Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind: working with alien SPSS files (Introduction to, and critical commentary on, SPSS files from major surveys distributed by the UK Data Service and others, with particular emphasis on their suitability and ease of use for teaching and secondary research.)
Slides for Close Encounters are on Talks
The Beginners’ [Clods’ ] Guide to Survey Analysis Using SPSS (Training workshop)
Slides for Clods' Guide are on Teaching-Documents
New tutorial 3.2.4 Income differences - Elaboration examines what happens to epsilon (percentage point differences) to compare earnings of men and women when controlling for selected (combinations of) test variables. Analysis is by tabulation in contingency tables using SPSS CROSSTABS but also demonstrates how CTABLES produces neater and cleaner tables.
August-September 2014
New page: Teaching with Survey Data with new commentaries:
Introduction and Commentary: Unrestricted Access Teaching Dataset (SN 7146)
Commentary on Relative Deprivation and Social Justice (SN 28)
SN28 Appendix 1 - Download of original data from UKDS
SN28 Appendix 4 - Annette Scambler's version
Link to new publication:
UK Data Service guide: Depositing shareable survey data on page Academic survey research centres (United Kingdom)
Rebuild site after catastrophic broken links: restoration of links to always Open in New Window
July 2019
New page SRU Student publications
Papers added:
Patricia Orwell and Angela Whitcher
The Cost of Volunteering: a pilot survey of volunteers' out-of-pocket expenses and insurance
(The Volunteer Centre, 1980)
Roger Blackwell
A Survey of Foster Parents in Camden
(Camden Association for Foster Care, 1983)
Alison Walsh and Ruth Lister
Mother's Life-Line a survey of how women use and value child benefit
(Child Poverty Action Group, 1985)
June 2019
Papers added:
Mark Abrams Middle Class Socialists
(Encounter, March, 1975)
Mark Abrams Social Indicators 1971-1975
(WAPOR,session: Economic Policy Research & Social Indicators,, 3 September 1975)
April - May 2019
Three new modules:
Stage 1: 3.2.1.5 Earnings differences 2009: Download and check file
(Preparation for replication of 3.2.1.1 Earnings differences – Elaboration using data from 2009)
Stage 2: 3.2.1.6_Earnings_differences_2009:_Extracting_and_saving_selected_variables
(Preparation for replication of 3.2.1.1 Earnings differences – Elaboration using data from 2009)
Stage 3: 3.2.1.7 Earnings differences 2009: Elaboration
bsa1983to2017zerocases.sav [download to be saved on your computer]
. . .is an SPSS "mother" saved file containing no cases: it can be used to make metadata mutually compatible for any or all waves of the British Social Attitudes Survey from 1983 to 2017.
Downloading BSAS data from the U K Data Service is a new tutorial detailing the process needed to register and download data for the British Social Attitudes Survey (BSAS) from the UK Data Service
VSPICE 1983 questionnaire for Values and Social Problem Indicators in Contemporary Europe (VSPICE)
SR502: Survey Research Practice course programme and handouts
SR501: Survey Analysis Workshop course programme for 1991-92
December 2018
New page Textbooks for Research Methods and Data Analysis makes it easier to find books, reviews, comments and on-line resources from a single page.
David C Howell (1941 - 2018) retired in 2002 as Chair of Psychology at Vermont.
Book: Fundamental Statistics for the Behavioural Sciences 8th edition
Companion website: Fundamental Statistics for the Behavioural Sciences
His website contains a wealth of material including:
Statistical Methods for Psychology
Outline of the Statistical Pages Folder covering t-tests, chi-square, regression, R and much more.
his personally revamped SPSS Manuals
The Longer Manual
The Shorter Manual
and links to some Great Web Sites (worth exploring, but some may no longer exist,)
October 2018
New guide added 22 October 2018
Downloading British Social Attitudes Survey (BSAS) data from the UK Data Service (pdf, 13pp, 914kb)
September 2018
New article added 28 September 2018
BSAS 2016: On the Trail of the Lonesome Nine(s) (pdf, 24pp, 648kb)
New page
British Social Attitudes: Making files from different years compatible)
New papers
British Social Attitudes Survey 1983 onwards: Date of interview [pdf, 4pp, 97kb]
BSAS 2016: On the Trail of the Lonesome Nines [pdf, 25pp, 649mb]
July 2018
Revised paper
Patterns of individual responses on 0-10 scales
Revised and new versions of guides to video tutorials for chapter 4 of MacInnes (2017)
4.1.5 Guide to video tutorials 7 and 8
4.1.6 Guide to video tutorial 9
4.1.7 Guide to video tutorials 10 and 11
4.2.1_Exercise_answer_videos_1-6
4.2.2 Exercise answer video 7
4.2.3 Exercise answer video 8 (new)
4.2.4_Answer_ exercise_9 (new)
4.2.5_Answer_ exercise_10 (new)
June 2018
Minor re-organisation of menus to move SPSS textbooks and Survey methods textbooks to main menu.
March 2018
Link to winning submission for Mark Abrams Prize 2005
Lucinda Platt
Making education count: the effects of ethnicity and qualifications on intergenerational social class mobility
Later published in The Sociological Review, Vol 55, No 6, August 2007 pp 485-508
February 2018
Review of:
Ronn J Hy
Using the Computer in the Social Sciences
(Elsevier ,1977)
New SPSS tutorial:
3.3.3.4 Analysing multiple response 4 - Dichotomous mode
New paper added:
David R Phillips
Do-it-yourself surveys: a handbook for beginners
Survey Research Unit, Polytechnic of North London, April 1980
[pdf, 115 pp, scanned 12 Jan 2018 ]
January 2018
Marsh C 1975
Job Satisfaction: the Search Goes On
Paper to UK/USA SSRC Conference on Subjective Measures of Quality of Life, Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge
SSRC Survey Unit, September, 1975
New guides/commentaries for MacInnes (2017)
4.1.6 Guide to video tutorial 9
4.1.7 Guide to video tutorials 10 and 11
December 2017
New link
Svend Juul et al Take good care of your data
November 2017
New document
Beverly Rowe, John Hall and Marianne Scheer
Computer Software for Survey Analysis
Special supplement in SSRC Newsletter 29, November 1975. Revised consolidation of 1973 and 1974 lists.
New page James A Davis (1929-2016)
Founder of the NORC General Social Survey
New commentary
Macinnes_4.2.1_exercise_answer_videos_1-6_for_chapter_4.pdf
September 2017
New page with details of post-grad course Survey Research Practice (1976 - 1992)
August 2017
Modifications and additions to page:
SSRC Survey Unit Quality of Life in Britain Surveys 1971 - 1975
New paper:
SPSS_files_for_British_Social_Attitudes_wave 32_(2011)_a_cautionary_tale_for_the_unwary
Commentaries on MacInness book
4.1.1 Overview of video tutorials 1 to 6
4.1.2 Downloading the European Social Survey Practice File
4.1.3 Downloading the SPSS syntax
4.1.4_Checking_the_SPSS_files
5.1.1 Downloading the full ESS6 dataset & documentation
5.1.2 Identifying the missing cases on [cldgng]
5.1.3 Creating a numeric version of country
5.1.4 Selecting cases and using the COUNT command
5.1.5_Using_COMPUTE_to_create_new_variables
More to come as and when
June 2017
MacInnes (2017) Comments on, and user guides for, MacInnes book:
Aide-mémoire for easier navigation of companion website
May 2017
Link to new book:
John MacInnes’ An Introduction to Secondary Data Analysis with IBM SPSS Statistics. (Sage 2017)
April 2017
Link to latest OECD Guidelines for Measuring Subjective Well-being (2016)
Link to ESRC what works wellbeing site
Link to Public value of crime and justice statistics in the UK (Office for Statistics Regulation, April 2017).
February 2017
New page Dedication and acknowledgments
Revised version of 3.2.1.1 Elaboration 1 (Income differences BSA 1989)
January 2017
New Paper:
Hall J F (2017)
Patterns of individual responses on 0-10 scales used to measure satisfaction and other well-being constructs, a comparison of usage in different surveys (pdf 32pp) examines the use of 0—10 scales in selected surveys and demonstrates variations in individual response patterns.
Link to excellent tutorial:
McLeod, S. A. (2016). Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. on the Simply Psychology site.
December 2016
British Social Attitudes: cumulative SPSS "mother" file for all waves 1983-2014 has now been deposited with UKDS. All requests for access should be made via ESDS on [email protected].
November 2016
New link: Schwarz, S A Proposal for Measuring Value Orientations across Nations
September 2016
Updated and fuller information on page Surveys by SSRC Survey Unit now includes links to holdings at UK Data Service at Essex University.
August 2016
Linton, Dieppe & Medina-Lara
Review of 99 self-report measures for assessing well-being in adults: exploring dimensions of well-being and developments over time
(BMJ Open, July 2016)
Programming and Data Management for IBM SPSS Statistics 23: A Guide for IBM SPSS Statistics and SAS Users (New edition: SPSS Inc.,2015)
New tutorials on page 3.2 Three (or more) variables
3.2.1.2 Elaboration 2 (Income differences BSA 2009 - 2014)
Selection and extraction of variables from mother file; selecting years 2009 to 2014 only; tidy up metadata; derived variables; check contents of file; frequency counts.
3.2.1.3 Elaboration 3 (Income differences 2009 – 2014_CROSSTABS)
Zero order 2-way contingency tables
3.2.1.4 Elaboration 4 (Income differences 2009 – 2014_CTABLES)
1st, 2nd etc order (multi-way) contingency tables New tutorials on Elaboration using data from the 2009 - 2014 British Social Attitudes Survey to examine differences in the earnings of men and women from paid work.
July 2016
Post Brexit trip to Paris has video clips of view from the top of the Tour Montparnasse (higher than the Eiffel Tower) and a trip on the river Seine
June 2016
Following intensive work on the SPSS files for British Social Attitudes, there is now a beta version of a cumulative file containing all waves from 1983 to 2014. I have moved page British Social Attitudes to the main menu and created two new sub-pages British Social Attitudes: Exploring the SPSS files and British Social Attitudes 1983 to 2014: Cumulative SPSS file
May 2016
A couple of papers of historical interest:
The Social Ecology of Urban Renewal (Hall J F 1972, 14pp) is a proposal for secondary analysis of the 1964-65 Salford Work and Home surveyf prepared for a series of seminars on Survey Research and Social Theory chaired by Morris Janowitz (Chicago). It's in very poor quality pdf format, scanned years ago on a cheap Dell scanner (almost line-by-line) but is legible.
A general data-processing package (Hall J F 1968) describes an Algol program I developed from 1965 to 1968 on the English Electric KDF9 computer at the Royal College of Advanced Technology, Salford (input and output on 8-hole paper tape: later modified to run on an English Electric PDP11 at Birmingham University). It was maintained as the Salford Survey Suite until 1979 when, in view of the wide availability of SPSS, I advised it be discontinued.
April 2016
New documents (18 April):
British Social Attitudes 1983 to 2014_Resolution of type conflicts
British Social Attitudes 1983-2014_ Beta version of cumulative file
Excellent new guides from UKDS
What is SPSS 20 for Windows?
Using Survey Data
My initial accounts of the work (still in progress) and problems encountered to combine data from the separate waves of British Social Attitudes into a single files are listed below:
:
1983 onwards
British Social Attitudes 1983-2014 _Constructing cumulative files
2009 to 2014
British Social Attitudes 2009 - 2014 Measurement levels
British Social Attitudes 2009 to 2014 _ Missing values
British Social Attitudes 2009 to 2014 _ Multiple response
British Social Attitudes 2009 to 2014 _ Variable and value labels
March 2016
New page
Exploring British Social Attitudes
New tutorials
Exploring British Social Attitudes 2014 a set of notes based on initial exploration of the SPSS file distributed by UKDS (Essex) and written from the perspective of someone wishing to use the survey for teaching data management and analysis in a hands-on environment.
Cautionary tale for the unwary specifically demonstrates the importance of checking data before generating attitude score.
3.3.3.3 Analysing multiple response exercise 3 - More replies than values [added 5 March 2016]
Using a question about welfare benefits received, this exercise demonstrates how to handle a question in which the same code values 1 - 6 are repeated within a set of 12 responses to the same question (but in different fields). This involves recoding the second set of values, but needs great care whn dealing with missing values.
January 2016
Maureen Ashman (Senior Programmer responsible for SPSS at PNL) re-emerges after 20 years.
December 2015
Captain Ralph M Schwartz (Field hospital, July 1944)
Live stream recording of the 2015 RSS Cathie Marsh Memorial Lecture What does the failure of the polls tell us about the future of survey research?
November 2015
[New page] How to use this site,
includes link to new document Guide to page and pop-out menus [pdf 21 pages]
[New page] Opinion polls
[New link] British Polling Council
[New entries on page United Kingdom (Major survey series: academic and other)]
British Election Study
Crime Survey for England & Wales (previously British Crime Survey)
October 2015
[New page] Developing research projects using survey data
September 2015
Amendments to Pantheon, including obituaries of Claus Moser (died 5 Sep 2015: see Guardian obituary)
and Muriel Nissel (editor Social Trends: died 1989)
August 2015
War and Peace
New section on local villages during the Nazi occupation, on D-Day, and on their liberation by the US 2nd Armored Division
July 2015
Count Us In: New report from British Academy
May 2015
Educational Project Overcoming Statistics anxiety (EPOS) is a research project at the University of Leuven and contains various reports on course construction and content, experience of teachers and students etc.
New upload (restored by scans and MS Snips)
Hall & Ring 1974
Indicators of Environmental Quality and Life-Satisfaction: a subjective approach
Paper to International Sociological Association Research Committee 26 Perceptions of Environmental Quality and Measuring the Quality of Life. 8th World Congress, Toronto, 1974
New pages:
SN 7146: ONS Opinions Survey, Well‐Being Module, April 2011
SN 28: Relative Deprivation and Social Justice 1962-63
April 2015
Links to Esther Leerkes and David C Howell SPSS mini-manuals
The Longer Manual
The Shorter Manual
(written for beginners as guides to the main manual) and to David Howell's teaching materials from University of Vermont Web Page Materials for Statistical Methods for Psychology, 8th ed.
Response to 2001 ESRC Green paper on Data Policy and Archiving
Sad news of death on 2nd April (at his home in Sun Valley, Idaho) of Norman Nie, co-author with Dale Bent and Tex Hull of Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) 1970.
New link to impressive MANTRA site (Edinburgh) for data management and anlyisis. Also new tutorial Data Handling Using SPSS 19 by Laine Ruus (2014)
March 2015
Review of
David de Vaus
Surveys in Social Research
(6th edition, Routledge, 2014)
New (draft) visual aid for teaching underlying idea behind regression and correlation
4.5.1 Visual aid for regression and correlation
Major re-organisation of menus and pages.
New page Workshop and presentations for ASSESS (SPSS users in Europe)
Alan Reifman's list of Summer Statistics and Methods courses for 2015
January 2015
Review of
Johnny Blair, Ronald F. Czaja, Edward A. Blair
Designing Surveys: A Guide to Decisions and Procedures
(Sage 2014)
December 2014
New page: Survey Research and Social Action
November 2014
Review of
Lesley Andres
Designing and Doing Survey Research
(Sage 2012)
October 2014
ASSESS 2014: Links to Contents
Slide-shows
This site won't accept files in MS Office *. ppt format: they have to be converted first. You can see the slide-shows for my workshop and presentation sessions for ASSESS (York) via my academia.edu page.
Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind: working with alien SPSS files (Introduction to, and critical commentary on, SPSS files from major surveys distributed by the UK Data Service and others, with particular emphasis on their suitability and ease of use for teaching and secondary research.)
Slides for Close Encounters are on Talks
The Beginners’ [Clods’ ] Guide to Survey Analysis Using SPSS (Training workshop)
Slides for Clods' Guide are on Teaching-Documents
New tutorial 3.2.4 Income differences - Elaboration examines what happens to epsilon (percentage point differences) to compare earnings of men and women when controlling for selected (combinations of) test variables. Analysis is by tabulation in contingency tables using SPSS CROSSTABS but also demonstrates how CTABLES produces neater and cleaner tables.
August-September 2014
New page: Teaching with Survey Data with new commentaries:
Introduction and Commentary: Unrestricted Access Teaching Dataset (SN 7146)
Commentary on Relative Deprivation and Social Justice (SN 28)
SN28 Appendix 1 - Download of original data from UKDS
SN28 Appendix 4 - Annette Scambler's version
Link to new publication:
UK Data Service guide: Depositing shareable survey data on page Academic survey research centres (United Kingdom)