100 Families

Professor Paul Thompson's study Families, Social Mobility and Ageing, an Intergenerational Approach, 1900-1988, also known as 100 Families, was carried out between 1985 and 1988. Its purpose was to gather ethnographic and dynamic information illustrative of family, ageing and social mobility. A sample of approximately 100 families was taken clustered in 200 wards in England, Wales and Scotland. The sample was based on a sub-sample of interviewees from the ESRC stagflation project and the initial focus was middle generation informants, aged 30-55, married with children. Interviews typically cover family background and occupation as well as a full life story covering childhood, working life, marriage and childrearing.