Method

The results are based on four inquiries. The first of these was carried out between 30th April, and 23rd May, 1942, and 4139 interviews were made with men and women in light industry. The second, third and fourth inquiries took place between 19th June and 11th July, 1942, when 1989 men in heavy industry, 1948 housewives and 1143 school-children were interviewed. (Questionnaires, Appendix VII).

The occupations chosen to represent British light industry were:-

Light engineering and chemical industry; distributive, transport and public utility; textile and leather; clerical (excluding executives and managerial staff); building (excluding navvying); food; printing; and police. The police were included as a group with special problem in which the Ministry of Health was interested.

The heavy industries asked for by the Ministry of Food were:-

Mining; agriculture; shipyards and docks; and iron and steel.

The housewives sample was taken from working-class housewives in 27 towns.

The schoolchildren were taken from one school in a working-class district of each of the 27 towns in which housewives were interviewed.

Interviewers worked in the following towns and citi4s:-

Glasgow and Clydeside, Edinburgh, Ayr. Haddington, Newcastle. Durham, Middlesborough, Liverpool, Manchester, Wigan, Warrington, Bolton, Leeds, Sheffield, Nottingham, Wolverhampton, Birmingham, Alcester, Coventry, Leicester, Norwich, Peterborough, Marlborough, London, Reading, Honiton, Templecombe, Rhondda and Cardiff.

The places of interview for the industrial sample were taken from a list of works, factories and other places of indusrty supplied by the Ministry of Labour, every fifth, or in some cases, every tenth firm on the list being selected.

The manager was first approached for permission to interview workers during the lunch-hour or at other convenient times. In the majority of cases, permission was given.

The housewife investigation was carried out on a house-to-house basis, and the interviewers selected their sample by choosing different working-class districts in the town where they were working. In each of these districts they interviewed a proportion of the sample allotted to the town by calling at every fifteenth house in the streets chosen. This inquiry consisted of two parts. In the first, all 1948 housewives were questioned about their own feeding habits, after which they were asked whether they had children under 14. The 1052 for whom this was the case then had certain questions put to then relating to the feeding of their children.

The schoolchildren sample was purposive insofar as the Director of Education for each place was asked for permission to enter a school in a working-class district. It was left to him to name the school, and then it was left to the headmaster to choose a form where the questionnaire could be administered to the children. The method of investigation for the school-children sample differed from that employed for the rest of the inquiry in that the children were given questionnaires which they had to fill up themselves. Wherever school meals were served and were taken by the informant, the truthfulness of the child’s statement about its mid-day meal was checked up against the actual facts. We found, with the exception of a very few cases, that we could rely on the children’s statements, and therefore feel justified in treating as valid the information they gave about meals taken outside school.

As these results are based on four different samples, for which slightly different questionnaires were used, it was not always possible to give parallel tables for all samples on all subjects. Wherever in the report such tables are not forthcoming, the reason is that it was technically impossible to provide them.

All interviews made referred to the previous day.

Investigators reported that the inquiry was received well, and appeared to be of interest to the informants; managers, workers, housewives and teachers all regarded it as being of value.