The MASS‐OBSERVATION ARCHIVE AT SUSSEX UNIVERSITY

Mass‐observation as a word was first used (without the hyphen) in the New Statesman and Nation at the beginning of 1937 when we published letters about this idea; and from the beginning we really meant what we said. It is worth having a look at the word itself, because its meaning has altered somewhat over the years. By ‘Observation’, we meant, of course, observing; and by observing, inferentially, we meant primarily observing by eye, looking at situations—though also by nose, ear, touch, using all of one's senses in fact. We did not mean, in the first place, simply asking people questions. We wanted to observe what they did, not what they said they did. In those days, any attempt to study society as it really was in England was certainly pioneering, in a way that it is difficult to remember now. The Gallup Poll had just started and was treated with a good deal of caution, as is the case again at the moment! The whole idea was novel in those days. But what captured people's interest in our case was the idea of observing. I have not changed my ideas about this, alas, though I have changed many of my other ideas in the last third of a century.