A survey of rural standards of living was conducted in Grayson County, Virginia by the U. S. Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Home Economics and the Virginia Agricultural Experiment Station in June 1931. As part of a larger cooperative study of social and economic conditions in the southern Appalachian highlands, the resulting report was to "form the basis for the development of effective and much needed home extension work as well as furnish valuable information of use to the departments of education, public health, the state traveling library, and other agencies in the state and county" (from the Annual Report of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute Agricultural Experiment Station, 1931). The survey employed several temporary workers to collect data from approximately 330 Grayson County homes. Compilers collected data on such items as sources of income, food produced, wild foods gathered, clothing and food purchases, family size, education, occupations and locations of adult children not at home, indebtedness, types of home, and amounts spent on health and personal items. Included among this data is a set of questions relating to individuals within the family, including birthplaces, names of parents, relationships, etc.

Data from the survey was eventually used in a report by Faith M. Williams titled "Variations in Farm-Family Living," which appeared in United States Department of Agriculture Miscellaneous Publication No. 205, Economic and Social Problems and Conditions of the Southern Appalachian Highlands. Tabulations were also used in the production of the manuscript, "Rural Family Living in Grayson County, Va." by Ilena M. Bailey and Faith M. Williams, which was never published, and in the master's thesis "A study to determine the food habits of three hundred thirty-three families living in Grayson County, Virginia" by Willamay Toland Dean, (VPI Agicultural Economics, M.S. 1937), call no. LD5655.V855 1937.D436. Information gleaned from the study also seems to have been used in a number of other reports by federal agencies.

A related cooperative study of Grayson County farm organization and management was conducted in 1930/1931 by the Virginia Agricultural Experiment Station and the United States Bureau of Agricultural Economics. The findings of that study were published in Bulletin 304 of the Virginia Agricultural Experiment Station.