Participant interviews disclosed worker anti-Semitism where polls could not

Evidence

Research for the Project on Anti-Semitism and Labor' lasted from June to November 1944. It was carried out in various industrial centres of the United States (New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and San Francisco), and used the participant interview’ technique mentioned by Pollock. Two hundred and seventy workers who had memorized a catalogue of fourteen open questions (for example, Do you remember having any particular experiences with Jewish people?', How do you distinguish a Jew from another person?’, What do you think about the Detroit riots?', Do you go to church?’) established their colleagues’ attitudes to Jews and anti-Semitism in everyday situations, and recorded the results in notes made afterwards. The combination of the similarity of the questions memorized and the openness of everyday conversational situations was intended to allow both quantitative and qualitative analysis of the resulting material. This is a pioneer experiment in social research,' the instruction sheet for the interviewing workers read. We want to know what working people honestly are thinking about the whole “Jewish question” and why they feel that way. Polls will not tell us. Interviews won’t either. Friendly conversations will.’ … In this way, 566 sets of interview records were obtained. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1556

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to ch17’s workers’ inquiry which was also suppressed for damaging implications; the labor project repeats the Weimar suppression pattern. — connects to: Anti-Semitic findings about American workers were suppressed to spare American opinion — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 675; Nondirective interviews can surface racism that institutions actively deny — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1498; The Berkeley anti-Semitism survey paired scaled questionnaires with clinical interviews and picture-based projective tests. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1526
• QUESTION: Was the ‘participant interview’ technique genuinely novel, or did it descend from earlier Institute methods? The claim of novelty deserves scrutiny.

Broader Connections

• Anti-Semitic findings about American workers were suppressed to spare American opinion #expands (0.80) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 675
• The Berkeley anti-Semitism survey paired scaled questionnaires with clinical interviews and picture-based projective tests. #expands (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1526
• Nondirective interviews can surface racism that institutions actively deny #expands (0.72) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1498