Seminar: Wartime ‘Census’: The University of Melbourne Social Survey (1941-1943)

The University of Melbourne Social Survey was Australia’s largest non-government survey falling between the two official Government censuses of 1933 and 1946.
Conceived and led by University of Melbourne economist Wilfred Prest, the survey interviewed a sample consisting of 7300 households occupying 6500 addresses in more than 20 suburbs across Melbourne. Not only did the survey fill a gap in the census, it served as a model for research intended to inform social and economic policy. The records of the survey preserved in the University of Melbourne Archives provide an insight into the history of social surveys as well as a detailed picture of living conditions in wartime Melbourne. Subsequent researchers have found the survey to be of enormous use and interest for historical and social study of the period. Hear University of Melbourne scholars and archivists discuss the survey and its afterlife in research at the University of Melbourne.
Speakers:
Associate Professor John Lack, Principal Fellow, School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, The University of Melbourne: ‘Discovering, Sampling, Coding and Sharing the 1941-43 Social Survey of Melbourne’

Professor Kate Darian-Smith, School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, The University of Melbourne: ‘The Prest Social Survey, Melbourne Households and the Second World War’

Dr Caitlin Stone, Senior Project Archivist, eScholarship Research Centre, The University of Melbourne: ‘The “Social Survey” in 2012: Presenting the data to today’s researchers’.