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Professional structure and its relations to certain social fields is an underdeveloped topic of research. A common understatement is that new eras require new professions, that is, when fields change the professional structure also changes. In some cases, the statement might be correct, but this common-sense understanding has little theoretical or empirical support. It ignores the fact that professional structures sometimes actually remain unchanged for long periods, even though the related fields have developed, or vice versa. Nor does it take into account that the knowledge base of the professions can be modified to suit new requirements. Moreover, it seems to underestimate the opportunities for professions to take part actively in field definition. In this paper, a conceptual framework is proposed to enable an analysis of professional structures and their relations to social fields. The professional structure is defined as the composition of professional groups and the power relations between them. The social field is defined as an institutionalized power area comprising actors and institutions struggling for influence. Swedish urban planning offers an excellent case for illustrating the theoretical and methodological findings in the paper. It is concluded that the field of urban planning has changed in some respects, but not fundamentally. The professional structure, on the other hand, has shifted dramatically. The variation in jurisdictional claims and influence can explain why the structure has developed in the ways it has. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent publication of a seminal paper analyzing variation in upward and downward mobility rates should alert social scientists to the possibilities for quantitative research in this intricate field. Like most trail-blazing papers, the analysis is subject to evaluation and a critical analysis at this point may stimulate further profitable research. The comments on the cover five problems. Although it is said that the upward and downward mobility rates used in the paper now under discussion classify farmers as manual workers, this rule is not easily followed. The top panel groups those nations in which the original data, reported farm sons and fathers separately from urban workers. Four studies did not separate farm from urban workers, but placed farmers in a low prestige category. It was decided to use all available nations by including farmers and grouping them with non farm workers. However it is difficult to use the same data and compute mobility rates identical to those obtained especially broken out in the original data. The efforts to reconstruct the identical data resulted in six different upward and six different downward rates.

The importance of scientific work depends on the number of scientific values it brings out and the extent to which allowance is made for each of these values. A perfect paper in social science should, among other things, build on safe data applicable to a representative sample. According to the nature of the research work concerned they have to weigh deliberately the gains obtained in certain respects against the losses incurred in other respects, or at least attempt to proceed as if they have done so. Different research workers easily come to weighing out the elements differently. There may be agreement about the scientific values but not about the weights to be attributed to them in research work. It is easy to acquire a knowledge of scientific values. It is difficult to adapt them. This is, however, a circumstance of which young research students are ignorant. Instead, they revolt at finding that such a large number of investigations turn out to be failures in so many respects. Later on, when they start doing their own investigation, they have to realize that there is a great distance between their aspirations and their results.

In this article, recent research on the economics of institutions is summarized and assessed. The economics of institutions is an attempt to integrate recent research in various sub-fields of economics and the other social sciences in order to present a coherent research program for exploring the link between institutions and wealth. Although the core of the framework is a modified version of neo-classical economics, it is argued that the optimal deviation from the neo-classical model varies with the level of analysis and the types of variables that we seek to endogenize. The unifying theme of the analysis is the introduction of transaction costs and the related concept of property rights, which give organizations and institutions a central role in economic life. The paper provides a summary view of the economics of institutions, and discusses in some detail two common lines of criticism: that the approach ignores power relationships in economic affairs, and that its use of the rational choice model is inappropriate. The need for augmenting the economics of institution with an operational theory of mental models and learning is recognized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Typical criteria for deciding whether to use one or two tailed tests of significance are examined in this paper and found to be too ambiguous to give the researcher useful guidance. This is unfortunate in that the decision creates a dilemma for the researcher. On the one hand, always using symmetric two tailed tests involves a substantial loss of power in the test. On the other hand, using the one tailed test may create the suspicion that the researcher 'peeked' at his data when the results are narrowly significant, and, moreover, should the results substantially differ from the prediction, the researcher may be unable to attach any statistical weight to the findings. It is suggested here that this dilemma can be satisfactorily surmounted by avoiding the use of one tailed tests entirely in hypothesiscentered research; instead where the researcher has clear outcome expectations, using asymmetric two tailed tests with 90% of the probability in the expected tail and 10% in the unexpected direction to enable the researcher to pick up the serendipidous finding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on two problems which formed the subject of research on the prestige of the law. The first problem was to find out what the Polish population in 1964 thought about the law in general and about the sanctions applied by the Iaw and to discover the general opinion about the present functioning of the law. The second main problem was to examine which connections, if any, occur between opinions about and attitudes to the law, and various psychosocial determinants of those opinions and attitudes. Particular attention was paid to socially objective factors such as age sex, education, occupation social background, place of residence and to certain psychological factors such as feeling of insecurity, social adjustment, rational or dogmatic attitudes, type of upbringing, attitude to religion, etc. An essential element of the research was that it included both types of factor, that is, both objective and subjective factors and that it tried to find out whether and to what extent, these factors affected people's opinions and attitudes towards the Law.

The article presents remarks on the sociology of social scientists. Initially, social science ought to engage in the critical analysis of society, which implies that social scientists should engage in discussing unsolved social problems, in analyzing them, and in taking a position on controversial subjects. Secondly, social science ought to be used as a tool for social planning which means that social science ought to put its knowledge at the disposal of politicians and those responsible for planning. Thirdly, social science ought to be used in social engineering, which means that social scientists should actively participate in solving social problems. In general it is difficult to measure the influence of social scientific research. One possibility would be to measure the way research is presented in the mass media and to observe the influence that it has on the reasoning of opinions transmitters and on opinion leaders. Thus the results of research may be used in opinion formation.

The article presents a research on the social epidemiology of schizophrenia. The emphasis on schizophrenia is because of its singular importance as a public health problem, because so much of the relevant research has been focused on schizophrenia. The author doesn't attempt to review the data on possible genetic factors in schizophrenia, although these are certainly relevant to any discussion of the epidemiology of mental disorder. The argument is that in the course of their developing illness schizophrenics tend to drift down into lower status occupations and lower status areas of the city. Personal examination by a single psychiatrist using presumably consistent standards is one potential solution, but applicable only to relatively small populations. Another is the further development of objective rating scales, such as the Neuropsychiatric Screening Adjunct first developed by social scientists in the Research Branch of the US. Army in World War. The other problem with community studies is even more serious.

The article presents information on Scandinavian Summer University and information on articles published including the contributors to the journal "Acta Sociologica." The Scandinavian Summer University was established in 1950. Its goal is the pursuit of interdisciplinary discussions and studies, Sociology of Law was obviously a suitable subject and in 1964 it was included in the programme. During the last three years students and scholars from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden have participated in the Summer Universities Sessions which each year take place in one of the Scandinavian countries. The participants have also prepared each summer's work by taking part in study circles, which have been arranged in some of the Scandinavian university towns. The present collection of articles is the first, more substantial result of this Scandinavian cooperation. The interdisciplinary research work is being continued in working groups directed by Kerstin Bimborn, K.J. Lang and others. The work in the Scandinavian study circles and the summer sessions has during the first two years been coordinated and directed by Hans Klette during the last year by the editor.