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MASS OBSERVATION ARCHIVE
Papers from the Mass-Observation Archive at the University of Sussex

Part 6: Topic Collections - the Home Front during World War Two

The Mass-Observation Archive is especially rich in documentary evidence describing the lives of ordinary people on the Home Front during World War II. This should come as no surprise for the Mass-Observation movement was launched in 1937 by Tom Harrisson, Charles Madge and Humphrey Jennings as an anthropological survey of the British.

Research carried out by Mass-Observation took several forms. Harrisson's team of investigators produced a documentary account of everyday life in Britain by observing, talking to and recording the observations of people from all levels of society: at meetings, religious occasions, sporting and leisure activities, in the street and at work. One of the first investigations they undertook was a study of Bolton and Blackpool covering the years 1937-1940 which became known as the Worktown Study.

Running in parallel was a London-based project in which a national panel of volunteers would reply to regular questionnaires on a variety of subjects. This resulted in the Day Surveys, 1937-1938; the Diaries, 1939-1965; the Directive Replies, 1939-1955.

Mass-Observation soon received commissions to carry out detailed sociological analysis on particular topics ranging from views on Anti-Semitism to shopping preferences. Such surveys were carried out in far more depth than a normal opinion poll, drawing upon the methodology of the Worktown Study and/or making use of the nationwide panel of volunteers. The Mass-Observation team would typically carry out interviews with several hundred people in a variety of geographical locations across Britain, taking down much of the conversations verbatim, as well as recording overheard conversations relevant to the topic and getting feedback from their panel of volunteers. There are now more than 80 Topic Collections at the University of Sussex ranging in size from several hundreds of pages to tens of thousands of pages of documentary evidence.

This sixth part makes available five more Topic Collections principally concerned with the Home Front During World War II. Namely:

- Evacuation, 1939-1944 (TC5, 2 boxes)
- Youth, 1937-1943 (TC51, 3 boxes)
- Children & Education, 1932-1952 (TC59, 7 boxes)
- Women in Wartime, 1939-1945 (TC32, 4 boxes)
- Anti-Semitism, 1939-1951 (TC62, 4 boxes)



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