Cathie Marsh (1953 - 1993)
Cathie Marsh, who died of breast cancer in 1993 at the tragically early age of 41, was a gifted social scientist who deservedly belongs in the pantheon of social and survey research. She was equally at home in sociological debate, empirical research and statistical modelling.
I first met her when she was a PhD student at Cambridge and attending the SSRC Survey Unit Summer School in Survey Methods at Reading University in 1974. She could turn her hand to anything (including organising a bar where there wasn't one before) and was not afraid of "getting her hands dirty".
The Unit was looking for a new research trainee and had just advertised a Research Assistant post, for which I encouraged Cathie to apply, and to which she was duly appointed. At the Unit she worked on a range of projects with myself (Quality of Life survey, computing, SPSS, commissioning fieldwork) John Utting (multipurpose survey, statistics) and Jim Ring (statistical modelling)..
When SSRC closed the Unit in 1976 she moved to Cambridge as Lecturer in Social and Political Sciences and in 1989 to the Centre for Census and Survey Research at Manchester, which is now named after her as the Cathie Marsh Institute for Social Research.
I first met her when she was a PhD student at Cambridge and attending the SSRC Survey Unit Summer School in Survey Methods at Reading University in 1974. She could turn her hand to anything (including organising a bar where there wasn't one before) and was not afraid of "getting her hands dirty".
The Unit was looking for a new research trainee and had just advertised a Research Assistant post, for which I encouraged Cathie to apply, and to which she was duly appointed. At the Unit she worked on a range of projects with myself (Quality of Life survey, computing, SPSS, commissioning fieldwork) John Utting (multipurpose survey, statistics) and Jim Ring (statistical modelling)..
When SSRC closed the Unit in 1976 she moved to Cambridge as Lecturer in Social and Political Sciences and in 1989 to the Centre for Census and Survey Research at Manchester, which is now named after her as the Cathie Marsh Institute for Social Research.
Publications referred to on this site
Cathie Marsh
Guidelines on commissioning an interview survey from a research company
(Pamphlet) SSRC Survey Unit, 1976
Catherine Marsh
The survey method : the contribution of surveys to sociological explanation
(Allen and Unwin, 1982)
Catherine Marsh & Jane Elliott
Exploring Data
(2nd edition, Polity Press, 2008)
Cathie Marsh
Guidelines on commissioning an interview survey from a research company
(Pamphlet) SSRC Survey Unit, 1976
Catherine Marsh
The survey method : the contribution of surveys to sociological explanation
(Allen and Unwin, 1982)
Catherine Marsh & Jane Elliott
Exploring Data
(2nd edition, Polity Press, 2008)
Obituaries (reprinted with permission) :
1: Ruth Durrel (CCSR, Manchester)
2: Angela Dale
3: Sara Arber (Sociology 1993)
1: Ruth Durrel (CCSR, Manchester)
2: Angela Dale
3: Sara Arber (Sociology 1993)