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© British Association of Social Workers

Public Attitudes to Problem Definition and Problem Solving: A Pilot Study

PAULINE MORRIS, JENNI COOPER and ANTHEA BYLES

Pauline Morris received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Essex where she undertook a survey of institutions for the mentally retarded, Put Away (1969). Her previous experience was primarily in the field of criminology: a study of a maximum security prison (with T. P. Morris), Pentonville (1963), and Prisoners and Their Families (1965). She is at present Director of the Nuffield Foundation's Legal Advice Research Unit and is also engaged in preparing a report on the Parole System for which she received a grant from the Home Office whilst Principal Lecturer in Sociology at the Polytechnic of the South Bank.

Jenni Cooper received an M.A. in sociology from the University of Edinburgh in 1971. She then spent 18 months with the Legal Advice Research Unit and has subsequently joined the Department of Social Administration and Social Work, University of Glasgow.

Anthea Byles studied sociology at Exeter University and subsequently worked at the Survey Research Centre of the London School of Economics for 3 years. She joined the Legal Advice Research Unit in 1971 and is currently engaged on a project monitoring and evaluating a Neighbourhood Law Centre.

Summary

An attempt is made to discover how people define their problems and on what basis they decide when, and from where, to seek help. The focus is upon legal problems since the study forms part of a wider project concerned with the provision of legal services. Ignorance and misinformation concerning the availability of both social and legal services, combined with apathy and resignation on the part of many who need help, are important factors determining the non-use of services. Nor can people's needs be neatly categorized as social or legal. The overlapping nature of their problems exists at a structural as well as an individual level; many of the legal problems experienced by individuals arise from inequalities in the social and economic structure of society.


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