We have studied hadronic events from e+e− annihilation data at centre-of-mass energies of √s= 172, 183 and 189 GeV. The total integrated luminosity of the three samples, measured with the OPAL detector, corresponds to 250 pb−1. We present distributions of event shape variables, charged particle multiplicity and momentum, measured separately in the three data samples. From these we extract measurements of the strong coupling αsαs , the mean charged particle multiplicity ⟨nch⟩ and the peak position ξ0 in the ξp=ln(1/xp) distribution. In general the data are described well by analytic QCD calculations and Monte Carlo models. Our measured values of αs, ⟨nch⟩ and ξ0 are consistent with previous determinations at √s=MZ0.