Latest news from the ESRC Qualitative Data Archival Resource Centre (QUALIDATA).

The QUALIDATA Resource Centre at Essex has now been in existence for two and a half years. Its aims are: locating, assessing and documenting qualitative data and arranging for their deposit in suitable public archive repositories; disseminating information about such data; and raising archival consciousness among the social science research community. Ultimately, the Centre aims to implement a policy ensuring that qualitative data produced by future ESRC and other funded projects are offered for archiving. Those applying to ESRC for research grants over the past few months will have noticed the inclusion of questions relating to plans for archiving any qualitative data they produce. Principal investigators must therefore now be extremely thoughtful in their plans for "processing" materials they generate in the course of their research, for example, ensuring that interviews are fully transcribed and that tape recordings are of good sound quality.

A major function of the Centre is to maintain an information database about the extent and availability of qualitative research material in general whether deposited in public repositories or remaining with the researcher. The Centre has surveyed almost 1500 identifiable ESRC funded qualitative social research projects dating back to 1970 by contacting principal investigators, is tracing the data arising from classic post-war sociological studies and monitors current ESRC projects. The QUALIDATA database will be available via the INTERNET from October, from which researchers will be able to search and obtain descriptions of qualitative research material, its location and accessibility. The WWW Home Page for the Centre containing detailed guidelines for depositing qualitative data, data deposited, issues relating to confidentiality and copyright, information about the Centre and links and references to other qualitative resources and repositories, has the following URL address:

http://www.essex.ac.uk/qualidata

This information is also available in hard copy.

Deposits

A number of sets of qualitative material have been deposited in repositories around the UK, and there are a further 200 projects for which data will be deposited, pending negotiation with the investigator or on completion of writing up the research. Data deposited include:

* Interviews generated by three major studies using in-depth life-histories have been deposited with the National Sound Archive in London comprising nearly 2,000 tapes (750 interviews). This will make available in the country's major public sound archive all the taped interviews from the seminal projects Family Life and Work Experience before 1918 and Middle and Upper Class Families which sought a national picture of ordinary life in Edwardian Britain by interviewing more than 500 people born before 1905. In addition the interviews from a later project, Families, Social Mobility and Aging: an intergenerational approach will be available for the first time. This 1980's study aimed at gathering ethnographic and dynamic information illustrative of family, aging and social mobility by interviewing several generations of 110 families. A further development from this was the project On the Edge of Later Life which looked at sources for self-identity and the contribution of earlier life experience to adaptability to aging. Locations: the National Sound Archive (NSA), British Library (BL) and at the Oral History Archive at Essex University.

* Professor Fred Lindop's Unofficial Union Militancy in British Docks (1981 and 1983) concerned with the ideas and activities of shop-stewards and trade union activists in the dock industry in Britain. Location: Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick.

* Professor Ray Pahl's Isle of Sheppey Study focusing on industry and training in the 1980's and his 1961 study of three Hertfordshire villages.

* Professor Robert Dingwalls' Protection of Children Study concerning agency decision making in child protection in the early 1980's. The project is based on an ethnographic study of agency work using case studies, observation and interviews. Location: Wellcome Contemporary Medical Archives Centre.

* Paul Thompson and Professor Ray Pahl's, Families, entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial values: Britain and Russia, a comparative investigation of family and cultural sources of entrepreneurial values and activity in Britain and Russia. Locations: NSA, BL and The School of Eastern European and Slavonic Studies, University of Leeds.

Please see QUALIDATA's WWW site or contact the Centre for further details of deposits, including those deposited with the ESRC Data Archive. There are also a large number of important existing datasets still to be catalogued in libraries, research centres or remaining with researchers where access is permitted. These include data from sociolinguistics/conversation analysis and many anthropological projects.

The National Social Policy and Social Change Archive at Essex

The Centre has recently received a two year grant from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation to create a National Social Policy and Social Change Archive to be based at the University of Essex.

The collection: the period since 1945 has certainly been the most important ever in the development of both public policy and research on almost all issues relating to the scope of social policy, structure and welfare. It is easy to think of many major studies on, for example, income, wealth and poverty; on housing; on community care, and disability; on family and parenthood. A number of datasets have recently been acquired and are available to use at Essex. Consultation is by appointment only and anyone wishing to consult the collections should contact QUALIDATA staff. The material is paper based but it is possible to obtain scanned machine-readable copies. Copyright is retained by depositor and authorised copies are permitted.

The largest set of materials is the Professor Peter Townsend research collection. Professor Peter Townsend was Professor of Sociology at the University between 1967 and 1981 and has pioneered research on poverty in Britain. The materials include:

The Family Life of Old People: carried out in 1955 with the aim of investigating the basis for a growing perception that a breakdown in extended family networks was leaving old people isolated and creating an increasing demand for residential care. A series on interviews and week activity diaries was conducted with 203 people in their 60s and 70s in Bethnal Green.

The Last Refuge: a survey of residential accommodation for the elderly was carried out between 1958 and 1959 to show its development under the NHS and to determine the need for such accommodation. In this complementary study to 'Family Life of Old People', 173 institutions, local authority and private, in England and Wales, were selected and interviews conducted with local authority welfare officers and matrons/wardens in each institution. Detailed notes on the buildings and facilities were made and every resident who had entered within the four months prior to the researcher's visit was interviewed and the case records checked.

St. Katharine's Building: this consists of a set of unpublished interviews which Peter Townsend carried out in the 1950s in St. Katherine's Building in Stepney, relating his findings to the ledger kept by Beatrice Webb and Ella Pyecroft as rent collectors in the same tenement from 1885-1890. The original manuscript, held at The London School of Economics, contains their impressions, as female rent-collectors, of the place and the people. Peter Townsend returned to St. Katharine's Buildings to interview a cross-section of the present tenants, some of whom are descendants of the original inhabitants spanning 70 years, with the object of writing an essay on social change in this tiny segment of London.

Child Poverty Action Group and the Disability Alliance Records: the records of two pressure groups which Peter Townsend co-founded.

And finally: A note to potential depositors

Researchers are asked to contact QUALIDATA as early as possible to discuss the archival potential of their data, preferably before any qualitative research has begun, and to consider depositing as soon as the first piece of substantive analysis has been written. The Centre organises twice-yearly workshops to provide social science researchers with a forum for advice and exchange of experience on issues relating to archiving and re-analysis of qualitative research data. These workshops are intended to encourage the re-use of existing data and to address questions associated with archiving and preserving qualitative data. QUALIDATA staff also give talks to researchers and post-graduate students and in the future will be offering advice on the use of archives in research and training. Finally, the Centre hosts open days on demand to enable researchers to visit and discuss issues in relation to archiving.

QUALIDATA, Department of Sociology Colchester, Essex C043SQ United Kingdom