Crown Street Revisited

This note describes a study to discover the extent to which it would be possibleto follow the respondents in a 1978/79 social survey in inner Liverpool. Thefollow up would be used to describe the ways in which peoples’ circumstances hadchanged in the intervening 17 years. It would also provide an opportunity todiscover how the respondents themselves viewed the changes that had taken placein inner Liverpool (if that was where they still lived) and the extent to whichthey had realized the aspirations they expressed in 1978/79 (wherever they nowlived). An additional benefit of the research was to ‘test the water’ forforthcoming policy related research in Liverpool.The results of the pilot study are clear and unambiguous: it was not possible tofollow up the previous respondents. Reasons for this are believed to includechanging attitudes towards giving information and to reservations aboutcollaborating in research projects which in the context of inner city Liverpoolare seen to have no benefits to local people. The prognosis for futuresurvey-based research is poor.These findings are consistent with more anecdotal evidence from colleaguesworking elsewhere in inner city areas and in sharp contrast to similar workundertaken in the very different political climate of the 1970s.