This study is based upon all entrants to the undergraduate degrees in sociology (including joint honours with other social sciences, law and French) in 2003/2004 when I was giving the lectures on the obligatory foundation course. Students were administered ICONI (Internal Conversation Indicator) but told they were free not to participate. Details for the construction of this indicator can be found in the Methodological appendix to Making our Way through the World. ICONI was administered in the auditorium, before the start of that week's lecture, in order to maximize returns and to ensure that through supervised administration it was completed by individual students without collaborating with their neighbours or friends. This would have been the drawback to the alternative, namely emailing the form to students and requesting its return.

One of the negative trade-offs involved was that the usual quota of absentees from the lecture did not participate. No attempt was made to follow up those absent because they may have been influenced by conversation with those who had been present. This was their first experience of participating in university research and a brief explanation was given about the project's aims, the ideas behind it and its relation to the ongoing Coventry study (a stratified sample of the general population). In addition, quite a large group of students remained behind at the end for further discussion. Therefore, although tracking down absentees was possible, there was no guarantee that they would still have remained ‘naïve subjects’, given the frequency of exchanges amongst students since all were housed in campus residences in their first year.