Ctrl + All. Computing the Social

Hamlet Evaluation System (HES) Basic Master File 7/1969 - 1/1973

This NARA file unit contains a HES Basic Master File.

Technical Documentation

The NARA technical documentation contains the document "Hamlet Evaluation System Basic Master File Description'.

HES.Y6907.Y7302

The original file is available as an EBCDIC encoded file. It is not a NIPS Data File. However it has a very similar structure organized into blocks and records.

PyNIPS seems to be capable of decoding the basic record structure. Following code

import nips.logical_record


with open("HES.Y6907.Y7302") as file:
	for logical_record in nips.logical_record.read(file):
		print(logical_record)

outputs a sequence of records:

LogicalRecord(offset=4, length=158, os_control=0, delete_code=b'@', type=' ')
LogicalRecord(offset=162, length=43, os_control=0, delete_code=b'@', type=' ')
LogicalRecord(offset=205, length=121, os_control=0, delete_code=b'@', type=' ')
LogicalRecord(offset=326, length=61, os_control=0, delete_code=b'@', type=' ')
LogicalRecord(offset=387, length=100, os_control=0, delete_code=b'@', type=' ')
LogicalRecord(offset=487, length=487, os_control=0, delete_code=b'@', type=' ')
LogicalRecord(offset=974, length=487, os_control=0, delete_code=b'@', type=' ')
LogicalRecord(offset=1461, length=387, os_control=0, delete_code=b'@', type=' ')
LogicalRecord(offset=1848, length=487, os_control=0, delete_code=b'@', type=' ')
LogicalRecord(offset=2335, length=87, os_control=0, delete_code=b'@', type=' ')
....

Further investigation shows that 1_277_164 records can be read from the basic master file using the same logical as for reading logical records from a NIPS Data File. This is exactly the number of records National Archive and Records Administration (NARA) reads from the basic master file.

The instructions for decoding provided in the technical documentation do not seem to work. I can not find any of the described tape markers.

QTAB Question Description Records - VARIABLE QUESTION NOT USED THIS CYCLE.

Some QTAB Question Description Records hold a sigle question text group (the structure that stores question and response text):

71017105VARIABLE QUESTION NOT USED THIS CYCLE.

According to the documentation (Basic Master File Description ) this does not seem valid. Currently our code parses this incorrectly as the 71st response for no question:

QTABQuestionDescriptionRecord(length=87,
                              os_control=0,
                              usid='         ',
                              record_code='3029',
                              record_start_date='7101',
                              record_stop_date='7301',
                              activity_code='0',
                              question_code='HMZ03',
                              level_code='HM',
                              topic_group_code='Z',
                              question_number=3,
                              maximum_response=0,
                              question_text_group_count=1,
                              question_text='',
                              responses={71: '017105VARIABLE QUESTION NOT USED '
                                             'THIS CYCLE.'})

Questions: