Chapter 11: NZ values – drafts and related papers for chapter 11: Tokelauan institutions and assimilation in the migrant communities by Albert Wessen., 1986 - 1989

The papers in this series relate to work conducted between ca 1970 and 1991as part of the Tokelau Island Migrant Study (TIMS) which culminated in the publication of: Wessen, Albert F., Antony Hooper,Judith Huntsman,Ian A.M. Prior and Clare E. Salmond (eds) 1992. Migration and Health in a small society: The case of Tokelau..

Headed by Ian Prior the project was based at the Wellington Hospital Epidemiology Unit and grew from a World Health Organisation initiative. In addition to those named above a number of other scholars were involved in the project including: geneticist, Ryk Ward; epidemiologists, Robert Beaglehole, John Stanhope and John Cassel; paediatrician, Shirley Tonkin; demographers, Ian Pool and Jan Sceats and nutritionist Flora Davidson; as well as lab technicians, secretaries, clerical and liaison staff such as Cara Fleming.

A core group of researchers was retained through out the Study and these together with the Tokelau Project Committee, chaired by John McCreary provided continuity and cohesion as the Study continued and accreted ancillary studies. Other members of the Committee included John Springfield, then Head of the Islands Division of the Department of Maori and Island Affairs and the directors of the Medical Research Committee of New Zealand (MRC) and the New Zealand Department of Health.

The project was largely funded by the MRC with additional grants from various sources. The ethnographic and historical research carried out by Judith Huntsman and Antony Hooper was partly funded by grants from the Auckland University Grants Committee, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (New York) and the Social Science Research Funding Committee (Wellington). The project was also able to draw upon money provided by the WHO when necessary.

The most intense period of primary research was between 1971 to 1986. Thereafter, though aspects of research continued, the focus shifted to publication and particularly the Oxford volume published in 1992 which was coordinated by Professor Al Wessen (medical sociologist), who had been the man from WHO at the outset of the Study and continued his involvement in his capacity as a professor of sociology at Brown University.

The primary research involved periodic epidemiology and socio-economic data collection from all Tokelau people both in the atolls and in New Zealand in three rounds of surveying. The atolls were surveyed in 1971, 1976 and 1982; New Zealand in 1972-74, 1975-77 and 1980-81. Two ongoing difficulties were the mobility of the population with people shifting between the atolls and New Zealand and vice-versa and moving around within New Zealand; and identification with individuals changing their given names, by anglicising or selecting another given name or surname, or abandoning father's or spouse's names for a family name.

Judith Huntsman and Antony Hooper were designated the behavioural scientists and designed and implemented socio-economic, demographic and cultural values data collection. They also advised the epidemiologists and others on matters of cultural sensitivity. The difficulties here centred on a way to collect individual quantitative data within the milieu of a communal society by researchers orientated to qualitative studies. For example, household data was not a reliable measure of an individuals socio-economic situation since access to resources derived from elsewhere - so the concept of consumption unit was developed to at least go some of the way to accommodate this situation.

Note that the confidential data collection forms compiled as part of the Study have been disposed of although the anonymous coded data derived from them is archived in Wellington.