An interview with Mark Abrams (1906-1994)
Readers may be interested in a new page on my website dedicated to the late Dr Mark Abrams (1906 – 1994) with whom I worked from 1970 to 1976 at the then SSRC Survey Unit (“at, but not of” the LSE) and subsequently from 1976 and beyond when I had my own Survey Research Unit at the then Polytechnic of North London.
My website now has a new page with details,of a 1984 interview recorded by his grandson, Dominic Abrams (then aged 26 and having recently completed his PhD., now Professor of Social Psychology at Kent University) With the agreement of the Abrams family, Professor Abrams has released a full transcript of the recordings together with copies of the original tapes. The recordings run to over four hours and the transcript to 102 pages. Accordingly the transcript has been divided into sections, for each of which there is a corresponding audio file. The full transcript and the separate transcript sections are available from An interview with Mark Abrams
He also talked about the birth, childhood, education and academic career of his son Philip Abrams (Dominic's father) who was Professor of Sociology at Durham University when he died suddenly in 1981. Corresponding audio files have been extracted from the tape recordings and are available from An interview with Mark Abrams (audio files)
He gives a fascinating account of his family origins, his childhood, his schooling, student days at the LSE in the 1920s, where he was taught by Laski, Dalton, Beveridge and Tawney, (his eventual PhD supervisor).
Other sections cover his son Philip Abrams (Prof of Sociology at Durham, who died suddenly in 1981), his time at the Brookings Institution (1929-31), his wartime service at the BBC, and the various surveys he carried out at the London Press Exchange and Research Services Ltd for government, the Labour Party and major clients, some of which resulted in classic publications, details of, and links to which, are on the site.
You can also download reprints of most of the papers relating to the surveys we did together on the Quality of Life in Britain.
Hopefully you will find this material both fascinating and informative.
John Hall (Mr)
Email: johnfhall@orange.fr
Website: www.surveyresearch.weebly.com
Skype: surveyresearcher1
Phone: (+33) (0) 2.33.45.91.47
PS The site also contains useful material and on-line resources for survey research in general and a series of entry-level tutorials on the processing and analysis of data from questionnaire aurveys using SPSS for Windows.