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The article presents news briefs on labor unions in the U.S. as of January 1953. The Industrial Relations Section of the Department of Economics and Social Institutions at Princeton University celebrated its thirtieth anniversary. Cornell University New York State School of Industrial Relations held several conferences from June to November 1952. The Research Council for Economic Security have appointed several technical and administrative experts to be its advisors. The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues called for papers to enter its Industrial Relations Award for the year.

This article explores features which distinguish and problems which may be anticipated in multidisciplinary team research. Illustrations are largely drawn from a recent research in the Institute for Research in Social Science at the University of North Carolina. It is suggested that three dimensions of a research undertaking are relevant to multidisciplinary team research: first, the number of people doing the research; second, the kind of action involved in the research process; and, the number of disciplines involved in the research. Some of the potential problems of multidisciplinary team research are: selection of a research problem suitable for multidisciplinary team research; assumption that multidisciplinary research has greater power than does individual research; semantic difficulties; and problems in theory and methodology. It is suggested that semantic difficulties can be adjusted or sorted out by means of conscious attention to group process in staff seminars and planning, provision of adequate time for reading, and preparation of glossary of selected terms with carefully developed definitions.

In clarifying what is meant by community organization, we shall consider first the somewhat related and earlier developed con thought and symbols. In the second place, the greater part of social organization comes into being spontaneously rather than by rational design. It should not be conceived as the product merely of definite and utilitarian purpose, but as the total expression of conscious and sub-conscious tendency, the slow crystallization in many forms and colon of the life of the human spirit." Social organization has resulted largely from uncontrolled evolutionary processes, at least until recently in certain societies where the idea of planning has taken hold. Community organization, on the other hand, is itself a rationally directed effort to modify the social organization of a particular locality. It is utilitarian, purposive. Since the community organization process must take place within a given social organization, its ideological basis will be largely determined by the social organization and culture it seeks to modify and will vary accordingly.

It is common knowledge that the behavioral sciences and the several fields of health and the health professions are working more and more closely together. Mutual understanding and respect, together with a spirit of cooperation, provide a climate in which joint endeavors in research, teaching and service programs are possible. Growing out of the activation of the Ford Foundation, the term, "behavioral sciences," has come to denote "all those intellectual activities that contribute more or less directly to the scientific understanding of problems of individual behavior and human relations." The area in which behavioral science may be most ready to offer substantial aid to health and medicine is the community. This is the larger social matrix within which the health and medical professions function. Behavioral scientists who have focused upon the community can now give more than a journalistic understanding of its nature. There is danger in the bandwagon tendency to turn to behavioral science for help on every problem, especially on those matters on which medical science has found that alone it does not have definitive answers. Behavioral science has no magic panacea to offer. Such should not be expected.

When a college adopts analysis and development of the surrounding community as one of its functions, the sociologist has a social laboratory to enrich his teaching, a laboratory not merely for theoretical research but for analysis which can be immediately tested for its soundness and effectiveness in resultant social action, a laboratory in which social action itself can be studied with variables controlled in so far as this is possible in social research. Few attempts by a college to become a force in its community have been as seriously undertaken as that by Furman University through the Greenville County Council for Community Development in South Carolina. There has been considerable activity in the field of education. Through the council and its contacts with national educational foundations, the Parker District schools, already nationally recognized, have further developed a progressive education program and the Greenville City schools have concentrated on a thorough evaluation and reorientation of their work. Improvement of the rural schools of the county has been outstanding and is now under the guidance of a rural school supervisor.

The article presents a discussion on a study regarding sociological analysis through field course procedure. It appears that one instructor can handle a maximum of fifteen students in a field course. In planning, proper consideration should be given to student needs and desires, the schedule being made as flexible as possible. Furthermore, certain danger points in nonstatistical field investigation should be stressed with the students at the beginning of the course. It is apparent that field trips are not necessarily valuable per se but require careful planning and student preparation. In using the technique of lecture-discussion by experts, care must be exercised that the presentation is to the point and that time for ample discussion is provided. In addition to the lecture-discussion technique, a wide variety of procedures should be used, such as the panel discussion, student discussion, interview, audio-visual presentation, field trip observation. Also, presentation of controversial issues should be balanced, with extreme views as well as a middle-of-the-road position being given consideration.

To understand the nature of the displaced tenant problem, one must be familiar with the agricultural economy of tobacco and cotton and more especially with farming under the tenant system. In a major portion of eastern North Carolina and in certain areas in the central part of the state, the two major money crops, cotton and tobacco, are important. Diversification in farming is sadly lacking. Along with this concentration of interest on money crops usually is found the tenant system. Tenants as a rule are either cash-renters or share-croppers. It is the latter group which has been affected more seriously by the prolonged agricultural depression and by government efforts toward recovery. To conclude, the pressing need for permanently rehabilitating farmer families in North Carolina presents a challenging opportunity for economic and social planning in agriculture. Displaced tenant farm families have little experience in any occupation other than farming. They must be rehabilitated in the midst of an agricultural economy already overcrowded and still contracting. With a like situation in several other southern states, the successful solution of the displaced tenant problem appears as one of the most important units in a program designed to eliminate social waste in the South.

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Results of state-wide survey conducted in April 1935 to obtain accurate data concerning the location, types and problems of the North Carolina localities in which there was a concentration of rural relief have been discussed. The first criterion used in identifying a rural problem-locality in this study has been that it must have on the unemployment relief rolls a percentage of its inhabitants considerably in excess of the rural relief-rate for the state. The available material makes it possible to delimit three types of problem-localities in North Carolina. These have been rural problem village, rural problem community and rural problem-area. Every problem-locality has its own background, development and immediate plight. Study of one county in southeastern North Carolina revealed five definite rural problem-communities which illustrates a special cause of demoralization. Lack of sufficient cultivable land, loss of industry, poor drainage, isolation and intermarriages have been some of the factors which have gone into creating the economic and social problems of these communities.

This article presents a report of the Committee on Standards and Ethics in Research Practice. Sociology finds itself in a position of continually increasing importance and also, as a part of this, of greater and greater exposure to criticism and even attack. It is because of this, as well as of other considerations, that the Society asked this Committee to continue to function in 1952-1953 with an expanded and more representative membership. These memoranda were circulated to the Committee members, and many members then wrote comments on them. The memoranda are being used in two symposia, one on "Professional Responsibilities" at the 1953 Liege Congress of the International Sociological Association and the other the open meeting of this Committee at the Berkeley convention of the Society. The memoranda, as adapted in discussion, are being made available to the "American Sociological Review". The Committee has visualized its role at tills stage primarily as a stimulator of discussion on standards and ethics in sociological search. The need for enlightened consensus is great but it must be admitted that sociologists far behind the physical and biological scientists and especially behind the psychologists in the serious attention they have given this Hence, the Committee's chief contributions this year are the memoranda it has developed under the guidance of certain of its members.

Presents an introduction to January 1954 issue of the "Journal of Social Issues."