Gloria Davis completed her Ph.D. in anthropology at Stanford University in 1976 with a dissertation titled, Parigi: A Social History of the Balinese Movement to Central Sulawesi, 1907-1974. The series consists of a copy of the dissertation and the data sheets that Davis compiled in preparing it.

As Davis describes in the introduction to the dissertation, In early 1973 I began a systematic census of the migrant area [Parigi, central Sulawesi], followed by a detailed questionnaire administered to 1,000 migrants. In this effort I was assisted by a number of school teachers in the various villages, and also by two assistants . . . who together administered about one-half the questionnaires and coded and compiled all the results. In early 1974 the three of us returned to Bali and gave the same questionnaire to 500 Balinese from sending areas for migrants in Sulawesi. The original questionnaires, filled out by hand and including the name of the person interviewed and the location, make up the series. Nine groups were surveyed in Sulawesi and six in Bali. Within each group, each survey sheet was numbered, and they are in numerical order. Appendix B of the dissertation provides an English translation of the survey form.

Because of the completeness of the survey data, the data sheets are an important resource for persons interested in tracing communities, families, or individuals in the survey area; reviewing the early stages of the transmigration program in Indonesia; or replicating the survey.