University of Melbourne Social Survey

From 1941 to 1943, Wilfred Prest (1907–1985), the newly appointed professor of economics in the Faculty of Commerce at the University of Melbourne, undertook perhaps the most comprehensive non-governmental survey of Melbourne’s social demographics to that point. It covered various topics including housing, work experience, household structure, domestic economy, diet, and travel habits of urban Australians during the War.

The survey had its roots in the intellectual background of its director, the Melbourne tradition of social reform, and the domestic demands of postwar planning. Running through all three factors was an interventionist streak, namely the belief that one ought to deploy the tools at their disposal for the betterment of society. To start with the first, Prest was born in 1907 in York, England. He completed a range of degrees at the University of Leeds and Manchester before becoming an assistant lecturer in economics at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. He arrived in Melbourne in 1938 to take up a position as senior lecturer in the economics department here. With him, he brought a familiarity with surveys, a method in wide use in England but which had to that point gained minimal traction here in Australia, except for tentative interest from Professor Douglas Copland. The work of Seebohm Rowntree in particular, an English researcher who carried out numerous welfare-oriented surveys into the living conditions of the poor in York, exerted a great deal of influence over Prest.

The interest generated in housing conditions by the Slum Abolition Movement also spurred the University of Melbourne Social Survey. Spearheaded by Frederick Oswald Barnett, a methodist social reformer influenced by a nebulous Christian socialism, the Slum Abolition Movement drew attention to the deplorable living conditions in low-socioeconomic areas of the city. Plans to improve the situation stalled due to the war and material shortages. But postwar planning commenced in 1942, and housing and employment were central to a growing social reform agenda. Effective policymaking requires detailed and accurate information, of which there was a dearth at the time. The census had not been conducted since 1933 and would not be conducted again until 1947. The Prest survey thus went some way towards filling this evidential lacuna.

The total cost of the survey was £2900. The Department of Post War Reconstruction covered around half of that, providing £1650, while the University (£950) and a group of Melbourne businessmen (£350) covered the remainder. Prest and his male colleagues directed the survey from on high and left the actual work of conducting the interviews to a team of women. Most of them were young middle-class women who were either senior students or recent art graduates from the University, usually drawn from the social work department. They were employed on a piecework basis and paid around 2 shillings and sixpence per completed interview. In total, 35 interviewers participated in the work across the duration of the survey, but there were usually no more than four at work on it at any given time. The survey initially aimed to reach one-in-thirty Melbourne households across all suburbs, but this later shifted to a one-in-30 sample of households in the central, western, northern and bayside suburbs and a one-in-60 sample in eastern suburbs. And they came close to hitting their targets. They successfully surveyed one in 35.8 addresses in the central, western, northern and bayside suburbs and one in 68.5 in eastern and south-eastern suburbs. Altogether, 7,600 informants participated in the survey.

Before interviewing commenced, Prest sent a circular letter outlining the survey's objectives and requesting the householder’s cooperation to every address selected in the sample. Prest’s letter occasionally elicited interesting responses from recipients. When the survey commenced, some refused to participate due to a distrust of the government, the intentions behind the survey, and the negative perceptions surrounding slum living. Embarrassment or shame among the predominantly working-class respondents about revealing details of their living or personal situations to middle-class interviewers also acted as a barrier to participation. But on the whole, Melburnians were receptive. Some suggest that ‘gender familiarity’ helped to overcome class sensitivities, as the interviewers were women and the respondents often housewives. Although responses were strictly regimented, interviewers were often encouraged to note any extraneous responses in writing, often on the back of the survey.

Prest published a synthetic analysis of the survey’s findings in his 1952 book Housing, Income and Saving in War-time: A Local Survey. But by this stage, as Prest conceded, the data was mostly of ‘historical value’. Despite limitations, the survey prompted some important conclusions, particularly that family size – rather than unemployment – was one of the biggest contributors to poverty, and that rising incomes created housing shortages in Melbourne. Various scholars, including John Lack and Kate Darian-Smith, have gone on in subsequent years to use data from the Prest Survey in their research.