ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the characteristics of the homes in the study, their staffing, resident mix and attributes of quality. It considers the individual residents included in the study and provides more detailed information about their lives within the homes. Despite its inevitable limitations in this respect, the observation study was designed to produce a large number of observations on different days in different homes and done according to a consistent procedure. It is considered that this provides a reasonable picture of particular aspects of daily life within the study homes. However 40 per cent of the homes were privately owned and the study probably included a greater number of such establishments than has ever been included in a UK study involving intensive interviewing. It included local authority homes, former local authority homes. Government statistics indicate that for marriages between 1920 and 1939 the mean number of children per household ranged from 2.38 to 2.03.
