The Purpose of the Survey

This enquiry was designed to find out in qualitative terms the kind of meals eaten by young workers, whether they were receiving certain important foods, and what arrangements were made for their feeding.

Certain sociological and industrial data relating to these facts were ascertained, the main categories of which were:- Where the child was living, at home, in lodgings or in hostel, whether the child did housework, the time spent in the day working and travelling, the number of hours up and the amount of overtime worked.

The enquiry was conducted amongst young workers 14 to 18 years old in factories, mines, shops and offices at the end of October 1941.

Method

The method of the enquiry was to interview 2,000 young workers at their place of work.

A questionnaire was devised in consultation with the Ministry of Health and with the advice of a number of factory managements and welfare officers; an officer of the Factories Department of the Ministry of Labour also took part in some of these discussions. This questionnaire was tested by a small pilot survey and amended.

Arrangements for interviewing were made in two ways:- Offices and Shops were chosen at random and approached by telephone, or where there was no telephone, directly and arrangements were made for the following day.

A list of factories without canteens was prepared for us by the Factories Department of the Ministry of Labour. Letters were written to the Managements of these factories explaining the purpose of the survey and permission was sought to interview their staff. (The letter to factories is included as Appendix 1). In all but one or two cases the firms approached were willing to co-operate.

In most cases a small number of young workers were chosen at random from a list of the firm's staff, but in some cases where the total was small all were interviewed. A rota was then prepared and the children sent in at regular intervals so that the minimum of time was wasted.

Most Managements were able to set aside a small room for our field workers and the interviews were conducted, with few exceptions, in private.

The purpose of the survey was fully explained to each child and cooperation sought on a voluntary basis. In many cases the subjects showed considerable interest in the survey. After the interviews our staff visited the workshops and saw the young people at work, this enabled them to check certain of the information given in the interview.

In the case of the workers in mines the interviews were conducted at the place of work underground.

The Managements were almost all in sympathy with the purpose of the enquiry and took a great deal of trouble to make it a success. We should like to acknowledge this assistance and also that of a number of Managements and Welfare Officers who gave us their advice in the drafting of the questionnaire and the planning of the survey.

The Memorandum

The Memorandum is presented as a report of facts and no attempt is made to draw conclusion about the adequacies or inadequacies of diets as the Wartime Social Survey has not the special knowledge necessary to do this. Comment is offered only to supplement the main statistics.

Some conclusions about conditions of work and feeding are given in Appendix 2, these are based on the observation of our staff.