Russel-Research-Method-in-Anthropology

Structured Interviewing I: Questionnaires 289
The Wisconsin Longitudinal Survey is another treasure. In 1957, the University
of Wisconsin surveyed all 31,000 high school seniors in the state about
their educational plans. In 1964, researchers ran a follow-up study on onethird
of those seniors (10,317) and were able to contact 87% of that sample.
In the next wave, in 1975, researchers interviewed 87% of the original 1964
sample by phone, including some people who had not responded in 1964. In
fact, by 1975, a few members of the class of 1957 had died and the 87% reinterview
rate was 93% of everyone who was still available then. In 1992, the
researchers tracked the 9,741 survivors of the original 10,317 and interviewed
87% of them by phone for an hour.
It’s not easy to track the participants in a longitudinal survey. Some die;
some move; some simply disappear. But the effort to really track and interview
the participants in a long-term project really pays off. (See Hauser
[2005] for details on how the WLS research team has tracked the members of
their original sample.) The WLS team began a new round of interviews in
2003 (the interviews were still going on in 2005 when I wrote this), and they
are planning another wave for 2022, when the Wisconsin high school class of
1957 will be 83 years old (ibid.). The nonsensitive data from the WLS are
available at http://dpls.dacc.wisc.edu/wls/ and the sensitive data (about, for
example, sexual preference, addiction, mental health, or criminal behavior)
are available to qualified researchers at http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/cdha/data/
data.html (Hauser 2005).
Perhaps the most famous panel study of all time is the Framingham Heart
Study. In 1948, medical researchers began tracking 5,209 men and women
between 30 and 62 years old from one small town—Framingham, Massachusetts.
In 1971, as the original panel began to die off, another 5,124 panelists
were added—this time, the original panelists’ adult children and their spouses.
Every 2 years, all the panelists go in for a complete medical check-up. This
study has identified and nailed down the major risk factors for heart disease,
which include, of course, behaviors (exercise, smoking) and inner states (attitudes,
stress)—things that anthropologists, as well as epidemiologists, are
interested in. Basic information about the Framingham study is available from
the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/
about/framingham/index.html and on the study’s website at http://www
.framingham.com/heart/.
Like these long-term panel studies, longitudinal research by anthropologists
are great treasures. Beginning in 1961, Robert Edgerton studied a sample of
48 mildly retarded people in California who had been released from a state
mental institution (Edgerton 1967). This was full-blown participant observation:
hanging out, following people around, doing in-depth interviews, taking
field notes. Edgerton was able to interview 30 of the same people in 1975