Mass Observation Online

Mass Observation Online is the digitized archive of the organization Mass-Observation, a United Kingdom social research organization founded in 1937 to document the actions of ordinary Britons in everyday life. The organization carried out this anthropological research from 1937 through the mid-1960s.

There are two major types of studies in the collection: material collected by paid investigators and material submitted by volunteers. Paid investigators carried out studies, surveys, and recorded their covert observations of others. Volunteers submitted diaries and responses to open-ended prompts. Rutgers has access to the core Mass Observation Online collection as well as Modules I-IV of additional content on this platform. Rutgers does not have access to any other modules on this platform. The original documents are held in the Mass Observation Archive at the Special Collections department of the University of Sussex.

The University of Sussex launched a successor program, Mass Observation Project, in 1981. The archives of this successor program can be found in the collection Mass Observation Project.