ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the attitudes of pupils and ex-pupils towards their lives in co-educational or single-sex secondary schools, including their attitudes towards their fellow-pupils. The size of the field dictated the technique of research. Attitude scales, in which a large number of questions are asked on a single attitude, were considered inappropriate because of the number of attitudes investigated. An important addition was that the principal questions were usually followed by a few blank lines on which respondents were invited to state reasons for their answer. They deepened the understanding of the estimates made, gave an excellent idea of the reliability and seriousness of the answers and also enabled the respondents to protest against any ambiguity or looseness in the question and to qualify their estimates. The co-educational and single-sex samples were always treated alike unless this procedure gave inadequate illustration to the arguments for single-sex schools.
