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This article examines Erik Jörgen Hansen's paper concerning Danish educational equalization. He starts by discussing a certain specified goal, social equality in the field of education. He then deals with a number of obstacles which according to him prevent the realization of the desired goal in existing school systems. Finally he proposes certain measures to clear away the obstacles or minimize their importance. The goals discussed by Hansen is social equality in the field of education. What this means to him he discusses at some length and comes out with a number of definitions. One of these, consistent equality, he then tries to operationalize. This means in its general version that equality is reached when the educational system is so constructed, that it for all leads to a result that does not make it possible to find any useful criterion according to which individuals can be singled out in relation to the education obtained. In a more limited way this goal can be said to have been reached if the individuals in various categories, examples are social groups, geographical area, sex and others, on the average, regardless of category, reach a completely identical educational result.

One hundred fifty-nine male African adults from the Belgian Congo were given a paper-and-pencil perceptual task devised by A. Rey and consisting of drawing lines between randomly arranged black dots so as to isolate simple geometrical figures. A practice task, where the perceptual difficulty was reduced by printing in different colors the dots corresponding to the different figures, was always given first. Both tasks were given without time-limit. Scores were number of correct patterns on the black test, and time taken to complete each of the two tasks. Both time scores were combined by Hotelling's principal components method. Two independent variables were obtained, one of which (J) expresses the general tendency to be slow on both tasks and the other the tendency to be slower on the (difficult) black patterns than on the (easier) color ones. The relationship of these components to accuracy on the black patterns was determined. Africans were compared on both time components with Belgian Ss at the same accuracy level. (It was necessary to use children because European adults are too accurate en this test.) It appears that, for the same degree of accuracy, Africans are always slower on J, but no difference is apparent on B. It is concluded that, as far as these tasks are considered, the slowness of the Africans--defined by comparison with Europeans of the same level of accuracy--is not related to task difficulty. This finding is more easily explained by a general lack of interest in speed performance than by a slower operation of mental functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociologists have given insufficient attention to the influence of structural properties on the process of socialization. This paper sets forth a set of typologies which is expected to place limits on, but not necessarily determine, the behavioral alternatives within socialization systems. The outline can be used as a heuristic device for comparative analysis of socialization research and for the design and evaluation of socialization programs. Three aspects of the structure of socialization systems are discussed--the novice-agent relationship, the setting, and the target roles. Novice-agent relationships are characterized by four dimensions: 1) specification, 2) relative anomie, 3) incumbency of the target role, and 4) role repetition. Variations in types of setting are: 1) formality of setting, 2) individual or group socialization, 3) serial and disjunctive socialization. Target roles may vary along six dimensions: 1) voluntary, involuntary or semi-voluntary entrance, 2) time boundaries of roles, 3) valuation of roles, 4) socialization into social group or social category, 5) degree of institutionalization of roles, and 6) relation of role to novice's identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human behavior, which is invariably a mixture of reactionary and forward-moving tendencies, is a complex thing and organizations function best when management works with instead of against human attributes. At all levels, the healthy organization must satisfy not only individual but group, inter-group, and the whole organization's needs for both growth and maintenance of the status quo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tins paper is intended as an effort at taking-stock of the reference group concept after nearly three decades of use, the latter two of which have been marked by its more than ample employment. Its popularity indeed has so frequently led to its serving as an all-purpose post hoc explanation of behavior that it has led to the wry definition, "Your reference group is a group that you behave like and you behave like them because they're your reference group" (Cohen, 1962: 104). The inconsistencies, lack of clarity, but also areas of agreement which have marked the varied formulations of the concept, will be apparent from the following review and commentary. The Final discussion indicates some of the matters still to be considered in the use of thin important but perhaps overworked concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the social psychology of physical activity and sports. Physical activity refers to vigorous activities which encompass competitive sports competition to simpler modes of human movement, such as calisthenics. Physical activity and sports are two methods by which man socializes with his fellow beings, thus the necessity of understanding social behavior while involved in the said interaction. The variables affecting physical activity and sports are attitudes, personality and culture.

The study presented in this paper takes its point of departure from the working hypothesis that institutional and cultural change can be empirically observed through the growth of a number of selected variables. In his writings, social scientists, F. Stuart Chapin has demonstrated the possibility of studying the successive values of certain strategic institutional variables over a period of time and establishing the law of change by the well-known statistical method of fitting a logistic curve to the time series. Chapin has linked this time series analysis to one type of broad generalization on the cultural and social change in the social group which he calls the cycle of the social process or the societal reaction pattern. An attempt will be made in this paper to summarize some of the findings made in an empirical investigation of a number of quantitative variables related to the organizational growth of ten voluntary associations. Theoretical considerations suggest that these variables are important in understanding the processes of organizational growth and formalization which constitute the topic of this paper.

Nearly twenty years ago, the author wrote a paper for presentation at a section of the annual meeting of American Sociological Society in which he sought to demonstrate the feasibility and utility of analyzing marital problems in terms of dynamic situational fields composed of interacting roles. Of little moment in the general progress of social psychology, the paper is nevertheless pregnant with meaning for the author. In the first place, it represented the results of his own efforts to integrate such of their ideas as he had assimilated from sociologists G. H. Mead, John Dewey, Sigmund Freud, Kurt Koffka, R. E. Parks, E. W. Burgess, H. D. Lasswell, and many others whose thinking and orientation are symbolized by these names, into a theoretical frame work which the author could apply to the very concrete and real problems of analysis and understanding of human behavior in the groups he was studying at that time. In the second place, the paper symbolized in his own experience the shift which characterized much of social psychology in the thirties from an orientation that led to phrasing explanations in terms of intrinsic attributes to one which can be called interactional.

The article presents information on the experimental measurement of a social hierarchy in Gallus Domesticus. The experiment is related to the identification and inferential measurement of social reflexes by the means of social discrimination. The first paper in this preliminary series of experiments narrates the general story of the method of attack on the time and space measurement of social phenomena. The article also presents a brief abstract of the findings of that paper. In the experiment, six young roosters were arranged in a hierarchy of dominance, the order being determined by the number of individuals in the group that each rooster is able to defeat in physical combat. This was followed by the application of the simple measurements of time and space. It was pointed out that this method of measurement and analysis was initiated as a result of reflecting on the discussion of conditions in the social sciences by other psychologists. Social discrimination in Gallus domesticus is identified as it is measured in the social discrimination cage. When the discriminations are plotted against mass, there is no indication that the discriminations are any more than chance.

This article examines the economic, social and political forces determining the concrete amount of education needed by all people. In his paper Torsten Husén states that in estimating the degree to which people can be educated, people are primarily dealing with a socio-politico-economic problem rather than a pedagogic one. Perhaps the main problem raised by Husén's paper is not whether the existing empirical information support a reactionary or progressive educational pattern, but the significance of empirical findings as such. The large research work done by Husén shows, by large, that the arguments put forward against the educability of people and in favor of selective or restrictive pattern of education are not, pedagogically, valid. On the other hand, it is certain that once a progressive educational policy is formed at the political level, the implementation of it need research directed to these specific ends. There are some principal tendencies in a class society to repeat the existing division of work and modes of manpower utilization by limiting of education of some demographic groups and differentiating mechanically the knowledge transmitted to people.

This paper (1) evaluates the preparatory communications to parents about the 1954 polio vaccine tests in a local suburban and rural area, (2) assesses parental reactions to the communications and to the vaccine program itself, and (3) examines the hypothesis that socioeconomic status is a significant factor in determining how persons receive, evaluate, and respond to communications on a public health measure. Higher-status parents compared to lower-status parents received much more information both favorable and unfavorable to the polio vaccine program and reacted more critically to the unfavorable information. A substantially greater proportion of high- than of low-status mothers permitted their children to participate in the program. This paper suggests that the media for communicating on science and medicine tend to be middle-class oriented and middle-class received. The significant question is: how can communications on health measures be designed, directed, and channeled so that large numbers of persons in all social groups will be reached and influenced? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tendency for neighborhood patterns of association to localize the exchange of farm information on a person-to-person basis is demonstrated in this paper by the analysis of two types of interpersonal relationships. Conditions which help to explain this relationship are examined and evaluated, and the relationship of neighborhood residence to the evaluation of sources of farm information is considered. Although consideration of the relative influence of neighborhood and clique patterns of association is beyond the scope of this study, the data show that clique members are more likely to live outside neighborhoods than inside. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information about the 1971 annual meeting program, organized by American Sociological Association (ASA). ASA is 65 years old this year, but hardly ready for retirement and very much in the pink of condition at least as far as its internal affairs go. As of June, 1970 it had nearly 13,000 members distributed as follows in the various membership categories. The growth of ASA membership over the past decade has been spectacular: in 1960, it had less than 7,000 members: in 1965 there were approximately 9,000; today, the number is 13,000. It has almost doubled in the past decade and added two thirds of that growth in the past five years.

The expression of hostility and conflict in a small group is a normal part of the small group process and is, in fact, a positive and even necessary factor in the development and maintenance of group cohesion. This cohesive function can be understood in terms of the role that hostility plays in the development of the social structure of the small group. In addition this paper has shown that the mere measurement of degree of hostility expressed in small groups tends to lead to conflicting findings. The positive or negative nature of hostility in small groups is related to the stage of the value structure of the group. The expression of hostility in a small group under the circumstances discussed in this paper is part of an integrative process in that it is an important channel of communication. Therefore, while hostility may be a destructive force in human interaction, it may also perform integrative functions, and these integrative functions must be more carefully evaluated and studied in the study of small groups. In the development of any field of study there is periodic need for the assembling, integration, and theoretical conceptualization of research findings. When this is done more fruitful experimentation can be carried out in the future. This paper has attempted to fill this need in the area of the expression of hostility in small groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patronal groups represent a significant category of social organization; they are worthy and even necessary subjects of social science theory, and will require for adequate analysis models which address aspects and institutions of social life that seem inherently unstable, or at least that do not lend themselves to the kind of equilibrium theories now so prominent in studies of group action. Though the patronal group presents problems apparently having to strictly determined analytical solutions (See Section III above), certain suggestive concepts and hypotheses nevertheless emerge. These look to fruitful lines of inquiry, and to a better understanding of such groups. First, there is the notion of "achievement of equity" in burden-sharing through enforced taxation as a specific purpose of group action, theoretically separable from other group goals, such as production of some group good. And, from the foregoing analysis of this notion, are the two core hypotheses presented in this paper: that patronal groups tend to repeat essentially self-defeating cycles of increasing and decreasing taxes and budgets unless this tendency is consiciously inhibited by adoption of an "unnecessarily" high tax level; and -- a related but separate hypothesis -- that there exists no "optimum" or equilibrium budget or tax level in any aggregate which approximates to the ideal type of a patronal group. In suggesting these new lines of thought, as well as the "patron-protege concept" from whose analysis they emerge, it is hoped that this paper represents a contribution to group theory which recognizes and uses, but at the same time goes beyond, the equilibrium concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the educational sociology of sociologist Émile Durkheim. It is the purpose of this paper to outline some ideas of Durkheim on education and to show how they are closely linked with his sociological thought. It can be no more than an introduction to a subject upon which the writer is preparing a more substantial work. None of the educational writings of Durkheim has yet been published in England. In fact most of them were only published posthumously in France. Some notes on the most important of them are given at the end of this paper. The majority of them were prepared in the form of lectures and are listed in order of the dates on which the course was first given and not according to the date of publication which is separately recorded. There are many lectures still existing in manuscript form. It was thought best to give quotations in the following pages in English and the translations are those of the writer except where otherwise noted as coming from existing translations. Moreover, this paper will conclude with a brief outline of four major functions of educational sociology which are based on practical principles in line with Durkheim's methodology. These functions are the determination of the present social facts of education and their sociological function, determination of the relation of education to social and cultural change, comparative sociology of education and the study of the school itself as a social group and in relation to other social groups.

The pluralist and interest-group (or modified Marxian) views of society offer two competing sets of hypotheses concerning the relationship between objective and subjective social status and the role of other variables in this relations/tip. Using a 1964 national sample survey of the United States, this paper specifies and examines these hypotheses more fully. Starting with a series of simple formulations, and building up to a fuller multivariate recursive system, the paper concludes that the data are more consistent with the interest-group approach than they are with the pluralist approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information about several papers discussed at the American Psychological Association (APA) conference on the levels and patterns of professional training in psychology is presented. It was attended by 100 delegates who were carefully chosen to represent the diversity of perspectives and constituencies together with several participant observers. Position statements and papers prepared by APA explore the community psychology which failed to gain a consistent identity.

According to what might be regarded as a basic postulate in sociology, when a number of persons are in interaction over a period of time, mutual expectations and norms develop concerning the behavior of the persons involved, and the individual's actions are not independent of these norms and expectations. the postulate is the basis of the hypothesis that relationships among neighbors affect many of the individual operator's decisions concerning the farm business. The author of this paper seeks to test the hypothesis that the extent to which farm operators adopt recommended farm practices is, in part, a function of the operator's neighborhood of residence.

This paper is an analysis of one hundred and one rural locality groups delineated for Wake County, North Carolina, during the summer of 1948. There is a high correlation between the quantitative indexes of four aspects of group life. There is a low correlation between the quantitative indexes and group identification as measured in this study. All four of the indexes have low predictive value of the strength of group identification. However, the index of the number of kinds of institutions and organizations appears to be more highly associated with group identification than the other indexes used in the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While causes underlying the current unrest on college and university campuses are multiple and complex, it is at least partially grounded in students' justified discontent with the irrelevance of much of their formal course work and the lack of concern and skill with which they are taught. The basic premise of this paper, and of the course to be described, is that sociologists are the members of the academic community best qualified to deal with these aspects of student discontent. Not only does the substantive content of sociology, in particular the analysis of social problems and their proposed solutions, encompass the kinds of things that students perceive as relevant, but sociological knowledge about the functioning of social groups could if intelligently applied to the classroom situation, raise the level of intellectual productivity among college students. This article describes the development of a course in urban sociology. The first objective in developing the course was to communicate some feeling for the operation of the city as a large social system and some tools for analyzing particular urban institutions and processes.

This paper presents a system of categories for the analysis of the development of ideas in small discussion groups. The proposed system focuses on ideas rather than on behavior of individuals, and provides the basis for a more definitive analysis of this aspect of the group process than can be achieved with other current systems. It is hoped that this system will provide for other researchers a highly useful and usable instrument for the study of small groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper reports an attempt to predict performance on tasks requiring cooperative effort by means of a group administered paper and pencil attitude test. Such predictions are of two sorts, main effects, that is simple relationships between test scores and performance of teams and interaction effects, like a relationship between the combinations of test scorers on a team and the team's performance. Tasks were desired which would reflect the achievement of the group as a whole, rather than either the sum of the contributions of the individual members or merely the contribution of the most effective member. Since there were nine trials per session, with each of six types of teams appearing three times in each session, practice effects could be equated for types of teams only through counterbalanced sets of three sessions. To make a test of significance more applicable to the data from all the sessions and not just to the two possible combinations of counter-balanced sets of sessions, an attempt was made to remove position effects.

The reported experiment is based on a few assumptions. First that people perceive each other in the two dimensions of tower as the ability to satisfy needs, and acceptance defined as the willingness to do so. A new research tool, based on these assumptions, the statogram, has been introduced. The second assumption (tested in other experiments) is that human groups should be divided into Instrumental, Mutual Acceptance, and Vectorial ones according to the objectives of their members. The experimental group reported here was an Instrumental one. Leadership in an Instrumental group has been studied experimentally in the reported experiment. Leadership has been defined as a relationship between two parts of a group in which one part, the leader (s), initiates, stimulates, and sometimes even determines the activities of the other part called follower (s). This study emphasizes the situational factors in leadership. Leadership is a function of the specific situation in a group. Specific hypothesis has been brought forward that in an Instrumental group, leadership is rather a function of power than of acceptance. A group of six subjects was assembled, two of them especially instructed, one of them had to behave like a strong but unfriendly person while the other had to be very friendly and weak. The results of statogram and of observers, mutually highly correlated, did prove what has been anticipated. A series of experiments are being conducted to develop the new research tool applied in this study and to corroborate further and on larger samples the hypothesis proposed in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information about group perception and social change in Sri Lanka. This paper is an initial attempt to gain some added insight into the process of social change in Sri Lanka by applying, in rather impressionistic fashion, an analytical model to Sri Lankan data. The perceptual model on which this analysis is based is, as of this writing, neither rigorous nor complete. It is hoped, however, that this type of conceptual analysis may prove suggestive as a possible approach to the study of social change. It is a basic premise of this paper that man behaves as he does because of the ways in which he perceives the external world. By perception, one means here the process by which an individual selects, evaluates and organizes stimuli from the external environment. While individuals and the groups which they Constitute can only act or react on the basis of their perceptions, the important point is that the same stimuli are often perceived differently by different individuals and groups. Whether or not an objective reality exists apart from man's perception of that reality need not concern us here. In terms of human behavior, however, there exists, for man, only subjective reality-that is, the universe as individual men perceive it.

This paper suggests that there are three important types of reference groups which act together to foster achievement level striving. These are the normative group, the role model and the audience. The normative group defines the roles the individual is to assume, the model provides exemplification of how the role is to be performed, at least adequately, and the audience provides anticipation of rewards for outstanding performance in the role. Expectations for performance level attained in two types of situations are discussed: (a) instances where one or more of the three reference groups is missing in the individual's reference group reporters, and (b) instances where the three reference groups are not "located" in the same concrete group or person. Finally, the reference group theory of achievement is compared with David McClelland's theory of n-Achievement and Max Weber's theory of achievement implicit in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past sociologists have argued that high membership turnover is conducive to the breakup of small primary type groups. Others have taken exception to this view. In the resent paper, we point out that the real sociological issue is whether the groups are structured to deal with mobility or not. If they are, mobility is not disruptive. In this regard we suggest several aspects of group structures which minimize the disruptive effects of mobility. These views are illustrated with empirical data on neighborhood cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problem of the interpersonal task, influencing others so they respond in ways congruent with one's own purposes, is a residual category both in the group dynamics focus in the common group task and in role theory with its emphasis on automatic normative reciprocity. Goode, Thibaut and Kelley, and Homans, see interaction as a bargaining process. However, the modus vivendi of the process is not made explicit in their work. Goffman begins to address this problem and this paper points to possible extensions of his framework. Given particular emphasis is the "altercasting" perspective which focuses on functions of acts in shaping the responses of others rather than exclusively on their content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the social-psychological forces which control the flow of news from source to reporter and into the press. It was found that the "fate" of the story is determined by the demands of the reference group of which the communicator is a member, not by the needs of the community or mass audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the last two decades social anthropologists and sociologists have turned to the study of informal groups. Among the first empirical evidence of the interest were the famous Hawthorne research studies of researchers George Elton Mayo and Fritz J. Roethlisberger. Since these studies many others have been made of informal groups in community and institutional life. All of them, however, have lacked concern with individuals who are not bona fide members of cliques, but who interact with them. The focus of the paper is on these persons. In the article, they are called "fringers." The concept "fringer" should not be confused with that of the "marginal man," for the two are distinct concepts implying different categories of behavior. The "marginal man" shares the cultural life of two distinct people, whereas the "fringer" defines his own goals of behavior and disregards those of the group in favor of his own. Specifically, the paper proposes to analyze and describe the role of "fringers" in a state prison for women. Data used are from observations and personal interviews secured during the author's employment at the prison as director of religion, education and recreation from June through October 1930.

A survey of the social landscape of any large metropolitan area will reveal a wide variety of groups commonly known as community organizations. These associations function as para-potitical organizations in the sense that they seek to initiate, influence, or control public policy. This para-political style of involvement has been part of our American pattern of government. Churches, along with many other institutions, have participated in this process, supporting various kinds of organized efforts to influence public policy. Attention has been directed to community organization in recent years for a number of reasons, two of which are readily identifiable: the black community is becoming organized; the style of many organizations discloses a crisis in the city. This research is concerned with black neighborhood organizations. The central point of this paper is that the general theory of public authority provides a helpful framework for research on community organization, for an evaluation of community organization, and for policy recommendations regarding involvement in community organization. The attainment of a more adequate expression of public authority is the imperative, which can guide policy in a general way.

Existential anxieties face the individual at the inception of his act. Derivatively, they produce a social problem and call forth a social response. This paper begins by illustrating several types of existential anxeieties. This is followed by an examination of some socially structured arrangements for assuring action despite them. The existential anxieties described above are rooted in the nature of social actions. They reflect factual suffering imposed by concrete freedom of choice. A value conflict or a condition of uncertainty is experienced as anxiety because conflicting motives are engaged or because an early trauma is reactivated. The result of channeling genetically prior motivational resources into support of more differentiated values is manifested as an act of courage. Courage may be defined as an attitude enabling action in the face of anxiety. Because existential anxiety inheres in every free act, individuals universally need courage. Society has an interest in courage. It is not surprising, therefore, that social institutions develop means to assure individual achievement of courage or faiths. This is a central function of the worship role in religious institutions.

The article introduces research papers included in the December 1954 issue of the journal "American Sociological Review." In this issue fourteen articles are published which place a central emphasis on the nature and consequences of lace-to-lace interaction. These articles, which might ordinarily have been spread through several issues, are collected into a special issue in order to direct attention of members of allied disciplines, like anthropology, and psychology, to the variety and extent of sociology's present commitment in the small group field. Within the ranks of sociology it is hoped that this issue may help to capture the minds and talents of members who have not previously concerned themselves with small group research. There is every prospect that authors of articles in the present issue, with their average age in the low thirties, will for many years be deeply involved in the development and clarification of small group thinking. The case for the study of small groups will be most satisfactorily resolved if their enthusiasm can be sustained, their work criticized, and their ranks increased.

The purpose of this paper is to describe two kinship groups, the conjugal family and an extended kinship grouping which is here called "the family group," and to discuss some of the structural strains involved in the kinship structure of Beech Creek, an isolated neighborhood in the Kentucky Mountains. In most ways the kinship structure of Beech Creek is like that of American society at large. It is a conjugal system in that it is constituted "exclusively of interlocking conjugal families." In the typical case an individual in this mountain community, as in the greater American society, is during his life a member not of one but of two conjugal families, the family of orientation and the family of procreation. In most kinship systems many persons retain throughout the life cycle a fundamentally stable-though changing status in one or more extended kinship units. The data on which this paper is based were gathered during six months of field work in the Beech Creek area in 1942 and 1943, supplemented by material gathered in periodic, short trips nearly every year since that time. The author openly assumed the role of "researcher" or "investigator," though the community's definition of this role was probably closer to that of "school- boy."

This paper is a preliminary report of a study of adjustment in marriage which has two somewhat unique features: It is a comparison of marriages ending in divorce with marriages outsiders judged to be the most happily married known to them and secondly, the subjects are fairly representative of the general population whereas those of previous marital prediction studies have been predominantly white-cellar, middle class and highly educated. The paper will deal with four topics: the nature of the sample; the criteria of adjustment; whether or not divorced persons are good risks in subsequent marriages; and marital prediction items. It was expected that the divorced would have shorter marriages than the happily married. A larger per cent of divorced than happily married were married for each five year period up to and including 15-19, and a larger per cent of happily married than divorced for each five-year period beginning with 20-24. The per cent of divorced and happily married whose marriages were of less than ten years' duration was respectively 56.0 and 38.6.

The importance of the concepts of role and consensus has been so well documented that it can now be treated as an assumption by sociologists. Still, however, the measurement of role consensus is not without difficulty since the concept itself imposes a number of methodological problems. This paper represents a suggestion of an alternative measurement combining a number of innovations from our present body of sociological knowledge. In brief, this involves the merger of the following: (1) the problem of comparing intraposition with interposition consensus; (2) the utilization of dyadic consensus; (3) the application of a correlational measure based on ordinal assumptions; and (4) the possibility of furthering the concerns of both macroscopic and microscopic analysis. Our approach will be direct and somewhat abbreviated in terms of (1) a brief rationale; (2) a working hypothesis; (3) a description of the instrument; (4) measurement; and (5) discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades limited research attention has been given to those smallest population centers, beyond the individual farmstead, commonly referred to as hamlets. Alluding to this fact, the following statement made in 1943 by the geographer, Glenn T. Trewartha, is still indicative of the situation: "… one of the most numerous and widespread settlement types in the United States, the unincorporated hamlet, does not deserve the near oblivion that has been accorded it by geographers and other workers in the social sciences." The lack of research interest may be attributed partially to the dimunition of the farm population and rural institutions and the increasing significance of industrialization and urban development. Because of these and other changes, students of society may share the opinion that hamlets are rapidly disappearing and consequently not worthy of study. Various studies, however, are not in agreement concerning whether or not hamlets have increased or decreased in size and numbers. According to Fuguitt, the contradictory findings stem from the fact that previous researchers have not made "a clear distinction between (1) changes in population size categories over time, and (2) changes in individual places over time." In a study based on Census data, Fuguitt examined Wisconsin's incorporated small towns for the period 1880-1960. He simultaneously analyzed the two analytical components indicated above through the use of the Markov model. His general conclusion was: "While fewer small towns are being 'born' these days, they aren't 'dying,' but are growing up to be big towns, in some cases." Although it is possible, as Fuguitt also suggests, that small unincorporated places are declining in size and number, there is little reported data to suggest they are rapidly diminishing as a rural collectivity or settlement center in contemporary society. In general, the purpose of this paper is to make a contribution to our descriptive knowledge of hamlets. Initially, an effort is made to determine the main activity pursued by the principal family supporters within or near the hamlet area. Secondly, based on the major activity pursued by each resident family's primary income recipient, a statistically derived typology of hamlets is described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research and theory relative to the lower class adolescent male peer group has focused largely on the culture and behavior of group members. Further, the focus has been on the different types of behavior characteristic of different groups. While this analysis has been quite fruitful, it has led us away from attempting to place all such groups on any single continuum which might involve structure as well as culture. Specifically, the concept of "gang" has either been used loosely to include all groups of lower class male adolescents or has been omitted altogether. This paper maintains that the concept of gang still has considerable utility as a category for research. This paper will be presented in five parts: (1) an analysis of the concept as used in the past into a set of empirical variables; (2) a description of a method used to get data on these variables; (3) a presentation of data relative to these variables; (4) an analysis of the correlation of these variables; and (5) an attempt to place gangs on continue representing variables found in small groups in other contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows that the reference group concept is useful for understanding premarital sexual behavior among college adolescents. Data obtained at a midwestern university suggest that the sexual behavior of students tends to be consistent with the standards and behavior of peer referent. Veer influence increases as students move from the freshman to senior year in college and is greater among social categories traditionally thought to be more susceptible to peer influence (Greek members and females). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the pattern of residential segregation of status groups in Puerto Rico's three metropolitan areas. The findings showed that in all three areas: (1) as the social status distance between groups increases so too does the degree of dissimilarity of their residential distributions; (2) the status groups most residentially segregated are those at the top and at the bottom of the status pyramid; (3) the pattern of residential centralization of status groups for Ponce and Mayaguez are such that the highest status groups are the most centralized while the lowest status groups are the most decentralized, but in San Juan it is the highest status groups that are the most decentralized and the lowest status groups that are the most centralized. The data are from the 1960 census. Indicators of status employed are education, occupation, and income. Differences in findings about centralization between San Juan and the other cities are explained in terms of differential economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Supervision of workers in a group has been tried in a variety of ways to achieve a variety of goals. This paper will describe an experiment with group supervision undertaken by the Jewish Family Service of New York several years ago, the focus here is on one of the goals of the experiment, namely, helping the caseworker achieve greater independence and thereby accelerating his professional development. The experiment was an attempt by the agency to do something positive about the complaints of recent years that workers are frequently caught up in a stage of interminable dependency, that other professions move more quickly to independence and the use of consultation than do social workers, and that the close personalized relationship in individual supervision characteristic of social work contributes to infantilizing the worker. The paper will first present the distinctions among the various types of supervision carried on in groups; then, based on experience, some generalizations about the characteristics of this particular supervisory process; finally, four illustrations that will demonstrate various phenomena and how they were handled in the group.

Theoretical explanations of deviant gangs do not appear adequate to explain middle class delinquency. It is the contention of this paper that for some members of the upper middle class, socially sanctioned means of maintaining their social position are difficult to realize and that these young people organize subcultures which fit the definition of a delinquent gang. The theory is illustrated through and ex post facto application to a middle class gang. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nothing the limited understanding of group dynamics among health reseachers using corrective group, this papers proposes that a number of principles already estalished in the field of small groups might be used facilite the processes of comformity and social control in correctve groups. An exploratory experiment designed to test the effects of several group charactiristics was conducted wth smoking cessation group. The experiment, with smoker wishing to quit, included four conditions: one with experimeter attention; a second with attention and simple group environment; a commitment, and goal interdependence. it was hypothesized that pressures toward comformity and control would increase with the addition of each successive characteristics, and that smoking reduction among the conditions would be ordered along this pressure dimension. The results of the experiment support the hypothesis; smoking reduction increased directly for use in corrective groups are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hypotheses relating family socio-cultural background to behavioral retardation of children are examined in this paper. Data obtained from a stratified-random sample of all Anglo and Mexican-American households in a southern California city of about 100,000 population are used in the research. Generally, the data support the existence of a relationship between family socio-cultural factors of ethnicity, social status, community of origin, and residential mobility and the behavioral retardation of children. When ethnic groups are considered separately, more variance is explained by socio-cultural factors for Mexican-Americans than for Anglos. For both Mexican-Americans and Anglos, the single most important variable explaining families with and without a behaviorally retarded child is mother's education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a paper which attempts to point out some of the possible connections between changes in archaeological and human paleontological remains from the Middle to Upper Paleolithic period. It offers information on the research about the early Würm of the Levant, and examines if the Late Mousterian's archaeological data suggest a shift in the adaptation of man to his environment. It is recommended that a change in hunting pattern had led to adaptive responses in tool manufacture and social grouping.

The aim of this paper is to understand the interrelations among relations within concrete social groups. Social structure is sought, not ideal types, although the latter are relevant to interrelations among relations. From a detailed social network, patterns of global relations can be extracted, within which classes of equivalently positioned individuals are delineated. The global patterns are derived algebraically through a 'functorial' mapping of the original pattern. Such a mapping (essentially a generalized homomorphism) allows systematically for concatenation of effects through the network. The notion of functorial mapping is of central importance in the 'theory of categories,' a branch of modem algebra with numerous applications to algebra, topology, logic. The paper contains analyses of two social networks, exemplifying this approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conventional interacting group is compared with nominal and delphi groups in terms of the quantity of ideas generated and perceived satisfaction of participants. On an applied fact-finding problem with no known solution, the nominal and delphi groups are equally effective and both clearly are more effective than conventional interacting groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an appendix note on a statistical question raised in the preceding paper.