ABSTRACT
The research took place in a small commuter village in East Anglia that the author shall call Selden Hey. Selden Hey is, by common consent, an attractive village. Some of its buildings are of historic interest, and its setting is complemented by the small stream that runs down the north side of the village and the expanse of common, protected by Royal Charter, that forms its centre-piece. A more appropriate solution appeared to be the selection of a sample on the basis of neighbourhood groupings: that is, by asking the occupants of blocks of adjacent houses to co-operate in the study. By selecting diverse blocks, each block containing similar houses, the problem of obtaining respondents from different socio-economic groups could be overcome. The concept of ‘star’ in the sense used is totally foreign to most people: they can go about their everyday life interacting with those they know without ever having any need to collate those people.
