ABSTRACT
PRELIMINARY discussions and a survey of the literature, started in February 1964. 1 A small pilot study was carried out between May and July of that year when periods of between one and four weeks were spent in three large hospitals, 2 in one of which the researcher worked as a nurse in an attempt to ascertain some of the nursing problems peculiar to subnormality. In addition, some days were spent visiting residential homes for the subnormal. Much later in the research, when the hospital visits had been completed, the additional information available about the nature of the research problem prompted us to pilot the homes more systematically and further visits were paid by those interviewers who had been involved in work in the hospitals.
