Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

This study is available via the UK Data Service QualiBank, an online tool for browsing, searching, and citing the content of selected qualitative data collections held at the UK Data Service. This is a qualitative collection consisting of 57 semi-structured interview transcripts conducted during phase two of this four-phased study. This study aimed to examine to nature of British Conservatism and how it attracted votes from the working class electorate. The researcher, Alan Silver, wanted to find out the social background, attitudes towards politics and the Conservative's appeal to this particular population of voters. He interviewed working class Conservative voters' attitudes and opinions towards key fundamental social issues and compared this to working class Labour voters and how they differed. He concluded that part of the appeal of the party lay with its projected image of competence, paternalism and national protection. Moreover the party was often viewed in a deferential manner by these particular voters since the party appealed to conservative values on immigration and on law and order. The empirical material was gathered in four phases. Phase one included 604 interviews with working class voters, from six large English cities, who had voted at the previous general election for one of the two major political parties. The population sample was designed to be representative of the entire population of Great Britain: sociologically, politically and geographically. The second phase involved 50 informant--who had been interviewed in the first stage--being interviewed again in a more intense and prolonged way using open ended questioning. The initial phase provided a quantitative framework in which the data from the second qualitative collection phase could be placed. The rich qualitative data was used to enhance and illustrate the quantitative data, as well as providing a useful validity check. The third phase included a sample survey of 1,261 informants from the general electorate in 36 marginal constituencies taken during January, 1963. It was used to analyse the opinions of the working class Conservative voters during a period of significant political change. The fourth and final phase involved the re-interviewing of eight working class Conservatives in 1963 about their reactions to the Profumo affair. The interviewees in this phase had already been interviewed twice previously in the earlier phases. This enabled the researchers to create a case study from the fourth-phase interviews, a specific event which threw the Conservative leadership into question. Phase four and the quantitative data are not held at the UK Data Archive.

Purposive selection/case studies

Face-to-face interview