This appendix contains more detailed information about methodological aspects of the housework study than is given in the text. It covers two areas: (1) methods of selecting the forty housewives interviewed; and (2) procedures used to assess ‘satisfaction’ and other areas of women's responses. These assessments play a key part in the analysis of the research findings.

1 Sample selection

For the purposes of developing an interview schedule, ten pilot interviews were carried out some weeks before the main survey interviewing (which took place between January and March 1971). The ten respondents for the pilot interviews (five ‘working class’, five ‘middle class’ on the basis of husband's occupation) were chosen simply by knocking on doors in two areas: one working class, one middle class.

The main sample of forty women was selected from the practice lists of two general practitioners in London – one in a predominantly working-class, one in a predominantly middle-class, area. The names of potential respondents were selected from the practice lists on an alphabetical basis. Two names were selected for each letter of the alphabet – the first two names occurring of married female patients born between 1940 and 1950, with at least one child under five. These criteria were used in order to obtain a relatively homogeneous sample of young housewife-mothers. Seventy-one names were yielded by this method. Each doctor was then asked whether any physical or mental illness in his view justified the exclusion of patients from the research sample. They were also asked to indicate the ethnic group of the patients chosen, and West Indian, West African and Indian patients were then withdrawn from the sample list; those remaining were all either Irish-born or British-born women. Again, the purpose of controlling ethnic group was to increase the homogeneity of the sample. (The argument for homogeneity is given in Chapter 2.)

After excluding individuals on the basis of ethnic group, the sample size was reduced to sixty-five. The procedure then used was to call at the address given on the medical card, using the doctor's name as an introduction, stating the aim of the research (‘to find out what housewives think about housework’) and inviting cooperation. Names were taken in alphabetical order, one from each letter in both class lists until a total of forty interviews had been obtained.