It must be stressed that, in this chapter, we are concerned with the role of professionally trained research interviewers who alone should be responsible for this vital phase in any project.
My own paper emphasised the need for us to take a closer look on the standards at which much exploratory qualitative work was conducted; my own view remains that if we are honest with ourselves there must be scope for improvement here.
In many ways the qualitative research techniques have remained static over the years and have come to be taken very much for granted. It is perhaps instructive therefore, in the context of greater sophistication in quantifying attitudes, to re-appraise these basic qualitative techniques. This paper suggests that perhaps we are not always critical enough of the ways in which, and occasions on which, we use the various pilot techniques open to us.
Audits of Great Britain Limited recently collaborated with the Ministry of Housing and Local Government on the Housing Layout Survey described in this paper. The Survey is part of a long term programme of research which has already included a desk appraisal of 26 publicly built housing schemes, exploratory work for the survey itself, and a study, comprising some 20,000 observations, of children at play. The Survey is to be followed by a survey of Specialist Opinion among housing specialists, some theoretical studies, and finally a High Density Housing Project which will be built according to the standards by then arrived at, and formulated partly from the results of the Housing Layout Survey. Six widely differing housing estates were covered; in all, 1,317 housewives and 370 husbands were interviewed by investigators of the AGB Field Force, using a structured questionnaire devised in collaboration with sociologists from the Ministry's Research and Development Group. Interviews ranged over a large number of topics relating to use of and attitude towards the estate in question, and the individual accommodation occupied. Results of the Survey are currently being assessed by the Ministry, with a view to preparing advisory bulletins recommending standards for housing layout to all Local Authorities in the country. Additionally, some of the results will be considered at length in design bulletins used principally by Local Authorities and Architects