The Institute’s recent Open House, celebrating its move to new premises in the Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) Building at York, gave ISR staff a chance to reflect on their past as well as look toward the future.
To Begin at the Beginning
The Institute was established by the Senate of York University in 1965 to co-ordinate research activities in the Departments of Economics, Political Science, Psychology and Sociology, to facilitate post-doctoral training and research, especially of an interdepartmental nature, and to undertake the sponsorship of large-scale research projects.
Following its first two years, which were spent laying the foundation of ISR’s institutional framework, an office was set up with three staff members. A modest amount of equipment made possible some preliminary tabulations of data and computer analysis. That same year, research programmes were initiated in Ethnic Research, Family Research, Political and Organizational Research, and Psychological Research.
By 1967, the Institute’s publication series was well underway and its first conference, focusing on the “Theory of Organization,” was held. The Data Bank had also been established by this time and began acquiring early Canadian Gallup Poll survey data and data collected by well-known researchers.
In 1968, the Institute’s Survey Research Centre established a field staff and a sampling frame for the Province of Ontario, and its very first project was a survey of political attitudes of Ontario voters. In 1970, an accredited course in survey research methods was offered in conjunction with the Faculty of Graduate Studies.
The Data Analysis Section, renamed the Methods and Analysis Section in 1971, provided support to researchers with basic data processing and analysis services. One of the Institute’s largest early studies was the Social Change in Canada project, also known as the Quality of Life study. From 1977 to 1981, this project involved more than 6,000 interviews which measured change in Canadians’ attitudes and values over time. Most studies during these early years were carried out using face-to-face interviews or mail surveys.
IBR Becomes ISR
The Institute, known as the Institute for Behavioural Research for its first 19 years, became the Institute for Social Research in 1984 as the term “behavioural research” had become too narrow a definition for the broadly interdisciplinary work being carried out at the Institute. Over the years, ISR has given birth to several other Organized Research Units at York, including the Centre for Feminist Research, the Centre for Refugee Studies, and the York Centre for Health Studies.
Consultation Services
One of the Institute’s goals has always been to provide consultation services to students, staff and faculty conducting social research at York. This was formalized in 1983 with the formation of the Statistical Consulting Service (SCS). Through this Service, a group of faculty and full-time staff provide consultation on a broad range of statistical problems, the use of computers for statistical analysis, and the presentation of statistical material.
For many years, SCS has offered short courses on various aspects of statistical computing including introductions to the SPSS and SAS packages. Since 1991, the Institute has also presented a Spring Seminar Series in both quantitative and qualitative social research methods. During the past three years, ISR's Summer Programme in Data Analysis (SPIDA) has provided a two week series of intensive courses designed to train social researchers to analyze complex surveys such as Statistics Canada's longitudinal surveys.
Telephone Surveys
When ISR first began conducting telephone surveys in the late 1970s, interviewers filled out surveys on paper while talking to respondents over the telephone. In 1986, ISR implemented Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI) which allows interviewers to enter respondents’ answers directly into a computer as they conduct interviews. The Institute uses the CASES CATI system, developed at the University of California at Berkeley. This technology has revolutionized survey data collection by eliminating the data entry stage, increasing data security and confidentiality, and making data readily available for analysis. CATI also allows for complex experimentation with item wording and ordering which researchers have found to be very useful.
The Institute’s first CATI survey was the 1987 Civil Liberties Study examining Canadians’ attitudes toward the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Around this time ISR also conducted one of the first large-scale national studies on knowledge and behaviour relating to AIDS. Since the 1980s, and up to the present day, ISR has also conducted the Canadian National Election Study whenever there is a federal election. Other projects ISR conducts on an on-going basis include the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health Drug Monitor (begun in 1996) and the Rapid Risk Factor Surveillance System (RRFSS) study for Ontario’s public health units (started in 1999).
ISR now has 60 interviewing stations and last year more than 60,000 telephone interviews were conducted across 15 major large-scale studies, as well as many smaller ones. These projects dealt with various public health issues, including alcohol and tobacco use, the linkages between local environment and health, social exclusion, fitness, and social capital. They ranged in scope from local to provincial to national.
Interviewers are really the front line workers at the Institute and a great deal of time is spent recruiting, hiring, training and monitoring interviewers to help them in their work. These employees are a very important facet of ISR’s activities and the Institute has developed programs to honour their contributions. Currently, the Institute employs a staff of approximately 160 part-time interviewers, five supervisors and eight monitors, as well as a recruiter/trainer and a scheduler.
Qualitative Research
ISR began using qualitative research methods in the mid-1980s and its use of these tools continues to develop. One of the main qualitative data collection methods used at the Institute is focus groups. ISR also undertakes in-depth interviews with key informants. Both focus groups and in-depth interviews are used for cognitive testing as well. In these “think aloud” interviews, respondents are asked to describe what goes through their minds as they answer each survey question.
Looking Toward the Future
The Institute is very excited about its move to brand new premises in the TEL building and also about the expanded level of services that can now be offered to the research community. And, we look forward to our next 40 years!
