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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]

This paper provides information on theoretical sociology. By theoretical is meant "theory-using." Any type of statistical technique uses a model of nature, that is, a certain technique makes assumptions about reality and here the approach to theory construction is through the use of models. This is the orientation which regards each theoretical construction in levels, from the most abstract to the most empirical—and each theory construction should contain some of these levels. In this paper the concern will be with the use of an orientation involving the reduction of linear models of techniques which makes a first step towards this. The author also discusses rather more techniques. By following this course, the logic underpinning stochastic analytical techniques, and causal modeling techniques can be revealed. Also it is hoped to reveal how theoretical sociology can be synthesized with a branch of statistics.

The article focuses on the nature of economic science and its relation to social philosophy. The subject of the present paper is such a peripheral study of the views expressed by famous sociologist Buckle. It is concerned with the nature of economic science and its relationships with some of its kindred social sciences, particularly of social philosophy. This two-fold nature of the present topic brings the writer face to face with a twofold difficulty. The first is that he is concerned with elucidating the nature of a science which even in these days of alleged enlightenment and educational progress is as much maligned as it is little understood. The second is that his subject lies on the borderlands of economics. For the misunderstanding of which this infant among the sciences has been a long-suffering victim, economists themselves cannot be held entirely free from censure. Certain incautious statements and poorly worded phrases, certain unnecessary and deprecable acerbities in professional controversy, have furnished material which their enemies were not slow to seize upon, to generalize and to use against economists as a class.

The essence of freedom consists in the absence of restraint and an election or any other concrete instance of choosing is generally deemed to have been free if each voter had an unrestricted choice between several alternatives, of which not casting a vote may have been one. This approach is objective because it is based on "post factum" data reflecting actual behaviour in a given situation and it is statistical in so far as the analysis embraces the decisions taken by the full membership of the selected group. But diversity alone does not necessarily indicate the absence of restraint, because variety can be enforced just as effectively as uniformity. If, for example, the actual statistical spread of the choices can be traced back to the definite orders of an authority, the actual freedom displaced is nil. There are also instances where, though the factor itself is unavoidable, its consequences are not. Take sex, for instance, as a determinant of choice of profession. Whereas it is hardly a practical proposition to alter the sex of a girl who wants to pursue a profession at present reserved to males, it would not be impossible to throw all professions open to both sexes.

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The article focuses on the sampling problem while studying some racial phenomenon. It happens much more commonly that the investigator cannot study all the instances of the phenomenon which he has selected for research. In this case he studies a limited number of them, called a sample. The total number of instances from which this sample is drawn is called a statistical universe or simply a universe. In the present paper an adequate sample is defined as a sample accompanied by sampling errors so small that they do not invalidate whatever conclusions the investigator draws. The sampling problem is defined as the problem of obtaining a sample adequate for a given investigation. A sample which represents a universe adequately for some purposes may be quite inadequate for certain others. For a study of the sociology of marriage a sample of three married couples from a modern city in the U.S. would be very inadequate. Yet the same sample of three men and three women might be fairly adequate for certain physiological studies, say, a study of the effect of a new drug on the heart rate.

This article comments on the paper "Toward a Social Report," published by the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare. This one is labelled Toward to indicate a preliminary step toward the evolution of a regular system of social reporting. It has nine short chapters. Sandwiched between an introduction and an appendix on social reporting are brief substantive chapters on: health and illness; social mobility; physical environment; income and poverty; public order and safety; learning, science, and art; participation and alienation. The distinctive feature and underlying rationale for choice of topics and organization of chapters is a pervasive concern with social indicators. This term, used widely and loosely throughout the literature on social accounting, is here given a particular definition. A social indicator may be defined to be a statistic of direct normative interest which facilitates concise, comprehensive, and balanced judgments about the condition of major aspects of a society. It is in all cases a direct measure of welfare and subject to the interpretation that, if it changes in the right direction, while other things remain equal, things have gotten better. Thus statistics on the number of doctors or policemen could not be social indicators, whereas figures on health or crime rates could be.

In their pioneer work "Social Mobility in Britain" the authors describe as one of their main objects "an assessment of the amount and direction of social mobility in Great Britain since the end of the nineteenth century." The authors define three points on the scale of intensity of association: "Complete association," which occurs when all sons have the same social status as their fathers; "perfect association," existing when all sons, whatever the status of their parents, have equal chance of reaching a given status category; and "complete dissociation," which occurs when all sons have a status different from their fathers. Neither perfect nor complete association are likely to occur in practice. Consequently, the authors of the symposium propose to assess and interpret social mobility with the aid of the three indices and the tests of significance based upon them. The conclusions reached in the symposium may be correct. They are, however, given no support by the heavy statistical framework, unless the authors choose to define association in terms of the index.

When the Council of the Sociological Society approved of the project of a Conference on the Correlation of the Social Sciences, and Oxford was chosen as place, the author looked forward eagerly to the event, both for the sake of the discussions, and as an opportunity of meeting the professed students of sociology from all parts of the country. It seemed to be generally accepted that geography, as the study of the natural environment of human communities, is basic in social science. In the case of biology there seemed throughout to be a good deal of confusion between two processes that appear to me to be very different --the taking over into one science of results achieved in another, and the assimilation of one science to another in method and outlook. Two other ideas of importance were put forward in the region of psychology. One is the correlation of social activities and institutions with the results of physical anthropology, the -development, in fact, of a new racial psychology. There is much uncertainty and even confusion about the field actually covered by these sciences. Jurisprudence touches the interpretation of the law of the land- -a very special and separate study; but it has a philosophical side, and is also a study of fundamental social institutions, closely related to social Anthropology. Economics includes the first-hand observation of economic institutions, and also the very abstract mathematical theory of economics. Political science, as presented at the Conference is akin to sociology in many respects; but in many minds it seems to imply nothing more than a study of the facts of constitutional history.

The article presents information about a statistic for random model testing. Very often testing for the random model becomes important in the social sciences. For instance, if one has three categories of classification, he would be interested to know whether the chance of an individual falling into these categories is the same. Conventionally the test statistic used for this type of analysis is the contingency x2. Authors show here that the notion of variance, if applied to relative frequencies, yields a simple statistic for random model testing. Further-more, it is shown that the few statistic, viz. variance of relative frequencies, is related to the contingency x2. As indicated, the social scientist frequently encounters in his research the problem of testing for the random model as well as for the degree of dispersion of responses or other attributes of individuals and aggregates involving nominal data. The variance of relative frequencies can be of significant aid to the researcher in reducing his data to a convenient single measure expressing dispersion and a test for randomness. The following case should exemplify the utility of the statistic. One of the important dimensions of the division of labor in science including the social sciences, is the pattern of scientific foci or interest within different scientific disciplines.

The article presents information about "The Report of the Presidents Commission on Federal Statistics." The report is now complete and available in a two-volume set from the U.S. Government Printing Office. The larger second volume contains a first-rate collection of advisory papers on topics pertinent to sociology, including a contribution by sociologist, Eleanor B. Sheldon, on "Social Reporting for the 1970s. The first volume contains the deliberations and recommendations of the Commission itself, chaired by W. Allen Wallis with Frederick Mosteller as Vice-Chairman. The recommendations fall under several rubrics. Some concern needed organizational changes in streamlining the production and utilization of Federal statistics. These include expanding the Statistical Policy Division of the Office of Management and the Budget to audit Federal statistical activities at all levels and to take the lead in establishing a long-range program in social statistics with National Science Foundation cooperation. The Commission also recommends an outside review mechanism in the form of a National Academy of Science-National Research Council Committee.

The work of the Committee on Marriage and Divorce Statistics of the American Sociological Association in recent years has been directed toward qualifying all states for admission to the national registration areas for marriages and divorces. The achievement of this objective involves getting both administrative and legislative changes made in those states which do not have central registration files of marriages and divorces or where the necessary legislation is available, which have not adopted the procedures essential to maintaining the required accuracy and completeness of marriage and divorce reporting. The Committee has secured the appointment of state representatives in states where reporting systems are deficient in one respect or another. These state representatives work in close cooperation with state registrars of vital statistics and with organizations and individuals interested in better family statistics. This procedure has been effective but much still remains to be done. Most state legislatures have not met this year but will be in session during 1965.

The article author responds to comments made by various sociologists on his paper on measurement and statistics. The author would like to clarify that he is neither encouraging others to squeeze out all information nor to disregard the consequences. In his article he encourages researchers to select statistics partially on the basis of answering the relevant substantive problems in question. This may require a strong variance measure that simply does not exist for ordinal data. The researcher must know a great deal about the consequences before he can select the appropriate statistical techniques and provide a sound rationale for using them in the face of not having the appropriately scaled variables. This requires a great deal more in the way of reasoning and knowledge of statistics than merely selecting those statistical techniques for which the data precisely meet the scale operations. Given a finite span of numbers, the more ranked categories that are assigned monotonic values, the less the overall error rate is likely to be. That is, the probability of large errors decreases as the number of categories increases.

The article presents a discussion on a sociological study made on delinquency area situation involving the conflict of values. Analysis of the problem of the causation of delinquency in urban areas of high rates of delinquents is frequently confused by allusions to statistical data which suggest that while in proportion of delinquents in these areas is high, this class nonetheless represents a distinct minority of the age eligible population. Examination of delinquency statistics indicates that no conclusive judgements can be made on the basis of these statistics. The statistics do support the proposition that urban areas of high rates of delinquents are characterized by a duality of conduct norms rather than the dominance of either a conventional or a criminal culture.

This article presents a logic for small-numbers research that takes advantage of the number of cases involved, and that has definite advantages for the development of theory not found in either the single-case study or the large-numbers approach. Briefly, the approach is a three-step one: first, explicitly delineate the universe to which you eventually wish to generalize; then, spell out what appear to be the most important dimensions along which the members of this universe vary and develop a typology that includes the various combinations of values on these dimensions; and, use this typology as a sampling frame for selecting a small number of cases from the universe, typically drawing one case from each cell of the typology. Most sociological research involved either the study of single cases or the statistical analysis of large numbers of cases. The middle ground, the study of a small number of cases, is occupied only rarely. Furthermore, most of what I shall call small-number studies involve either a direct extension of the single-case-study logic or an attempt at following the logic of statistical studies with an inadequate number of cases.

This article discusses some mathematical elements in social sciences. The mathematical and statistical literature which can be classified as being of interest to social scientists is continually increasing - and increasing progressively. Business economics had a comprehensive literature about conflicting interests between firms, and sociology had an equally comprehensive literature about conflicts between groups and between persons in a group, finally psychology had a treatment of the individual decision-maker's conflict state in a situation in which a decision is to be made in choosing among several uncertain alternatives. The numerical solution is a combination of available information and rules of calculation resulting in a concrete alternative. In mathematics, tradition has formerly left the latter solution in the cold, but in recent years it has returned to favor in connection with the development of the simulation method, which may enable social science to make experiments to a much higher degree and in so doing get a better approximation to the optimal situation wanted.

While the effects of social origin variables on the status attainment process of individuals are well recognized, the influence of career contingencies--events occurring subsequent to the determination of social origin status--are less well explored. Using the 1/100 Public Use Sample of the 1960 U.S. Census, we examine the effects of one career contingency-military service-with respect to current income for three ethnic groups, Mexican Americans, blacks, and Anglos in five Southwestern stales. Contrary to expectations based on Anglo-dominated statistics in which nonveterans report higher average income than veterans, among both blacks and Mexican Americans, veterans have higher average income than nonveterans. The concept of a "bridging environment" as applied to military service is used to interpret the minority patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Out of 81 logically possible patterns of sexual socialization, 14 were found to occur in a cross-cultural sample of societies. The occurrence of these 14 patterns, as opposed to the other 67, could not be explained in terms of their internal consistency nor in terms of the socialization continuity they provide. However, both an inhibition-imitation hypothesis and an adolescent strain hypothesis held some differentiating power. Shifting the unit of analysis from patterns to societies, the available evidence indicated that patterns with perfect internal consistency and/or continuity are favored in terms of frequency of occurrence but, among patterns which are not perfect, the degree of consistency or continuity is not much related to occurrence frequencies. Use of a statistical model to make predictions from the continuity hypothesis concerning intergenerational change suggested that movements from pattern to pattern are not determined solely by pressures for cultural continuity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Statistical investigations of the nature or extent of crime are often inconclusive because of the inaccuracy of police, court, and prison records. Besides, the prevalent use of such geographical units as states and nations may obscure significant differences that would appear in an inquiry of greater specificity. This study of homicide in South Carolina, a relatively homogeneous state, attempts to avoid these difficulties, since regional investigations "offer excellent opportunities for such analysis as will distinguish between causal factors and merely component relationships," and since the records of the state and federal bureaus of vital statistics give comparatively reliable data concerning homicide, the killing of one person by another except by accident or legal execution. Approximately 155000 death certificates in the files of the South Carolina Bureau of Vital Statistics were examined, the probable homicide cases secured and investigated further by letters to physicians and county authorities, and the annual rates per 100000 population calculated for each of the counties of the state, this part of the study being limited to the seven year period 1920-1926. In addition, the rates for cities of 10000 or more population were obtained for the years 1920 and 1925 from data supplied by the United States Division of Vital Statistics.

In the sociological literature of the day various methods of social investigation are frequently enumerated, and arguments advanced for or against each. At the same time there is quite general agreement as to what constitutes scientific method in general, and as to the specific steps which it involves. The differences of opinion, therefore, as to what are profitable methods of procedure in social research are not over the value of different scientific methods but rather over various methods or techniques of executing certain steps in scientific method, especially the steps of classification and generalization. The only possible question as to the relative value of the case method and the statistical method resolves itself into a question as to whether the classification of, and generalizations from the data shall be carried out by the random, qualitative and subjective method of common observation or through the systematic, quantitative and objective procedure of statistical method. The skepticism about the statistical method as a possible instrument in case analysis is chiefly due to ignorance of what statistical method involves and includes.

The article offers information on a sociologiocal study conducted on the conflict of values in delinquency areas by the Illinois Institute for Juvenile Research. It is based on a hypothesis that in the disorganized city areas delinquency is primarily a product of cultural rather than of personality or psychological processes. Some of the official statistics of delinquency seem to suggest that most children conform to the legal norms of the wider society even in those urban areas where the culture of the local community is relatively favorable to the tranmission of delinquent conduct patterns. The statistics infers that even in this situation variables other than culture are of possibly greater importance in delinquency causation than the customary sociological explanations would concede.

Present knowledge of population characteristics and trends in many parts of the world is seriously defective, when compared with the minimum needs for even the most elementary demographic analysis. The deficiencies are especially serious in the countries of Africa and Asia, and to a lesser extent in those of Latin America. Very many of the countries in these regions have had either no population census at all in recent decades, or only censuses known to be grossly deficient in coverage. Only a few of them have census data on sex and age of the population which can meet mild tests of accuracy and of sufficiency for analytical studies. Yet in these regions the census is almost universally the only source of information about population trends, for statistics of births and deaths are usually either totally lacking or too incomplete for use in this connexion. The population censuses which are being taken in 1950 or planned in 1951 for a great many countries will undoubtedly make an important improvement in this situation. But the extent of the improvement, with reference to the statistically backward regions, may be disappointing unless greater care is taken in these censuses than in previous ones to obtain data which are accurate enough, broad enough in coverage and tabulated in enough detail to satisfy the most important needs for analysis. Such methods as careful verification in selected sample areas of the completeness of enumeration and accuracy of returns, especially on such important subjects as sex and age of the people, would ensure the maximum product of usable statistics. The need for such improvement is shown in this article by an analysis of the census statistics obtained in each country having 1,000,000 or more population between 1919 and 1949. Tables are presented showing the availability of essential data on population size, growth and structure with reference to sex and age groups for each country, together with the results of simple tests of the completeness and accuracy of the data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the Canadian sample for labour force and other population data. The collection of statistical data by sampling rather than by supposedly complete enumeration is today a liberating force in all-quantitative work. Its advantages in the study of problems of population are especially great and are rapidly becoming apparent in several broad directions. Apart from the registration of births and deaths, which is important from a civil as well as from a statistical point of view, most of the population data in the past have in fact been obtained from the compilations of the census taker. Censuses have usually been separated by 10 or at least 5-year periods, the long interval between the time to which the data refer and the time at which they are released, often give them an interest which is largely historical, the questions tend of necessity to be confined to a more or less familiar set, suggested variations or additions to which must all too often be rejected as unwieldy or too expensive. With sampling, on the other hand, surveys can be carried out on a smaller scale, and hence more flexibly, the field is wide open for experimentation with new questions which are both more detailed and more meaningful than those which can be included in a census.

The article discusses the use of computer simulation techniques in sociology. The investigation and exploitation of the immense facilities offered to the sociologist by the use of computers are still in embryo. In a given field of application, the diffusion of the techniques for automated processing of information generally goes through three stages, automation of existing procedures, borrowing from other disciplines the automated procedures that are proper to them, and conception of new procedures suggested by the possibilities of data-processing. Sociology is still far from reaching that third stage. The objectives of the first phase have, in general, been achieved, techniques for the extraction of data from surveys, and techniques for statistical analysis and content analysis, have been automated and to some extent improved. The second phase, that of applications new in sociology but in fact borrowed from other disciplines, at present contains only one acquisition, inherited from operational research, the group of simulation techniques. Simulation techniques allow of the solution of a problem by which sociologists have been beset since the beginnings of sociology, that of the operative formulation of theories, making it possible to test the coherence and compatibility of those theories with the observations. Simulation is a good substitute for calculation methods when the latter are inapplicable, incomplete.

In the summer of 1943 Barnard College offered a six-week field course entitled "A Workshop in Urban Social Problems." Field courses are relatively new and a brief description of this recent experiment may be of interest to teachers of Sociology. As the title indicates, the course dealt with urban social problems. Following a background consideration of urban society the discussion centered on selected urban problems such as the problems of racial and cultural minorities, housing, and juvenile delinquency. New York City materials were utilized to the utmost in the study of the historical emergence of the problem, in current statistics, and charts, in field trips to various areas and institutions of the city, in the numerous opportunities afforded the students to meet informally over "cider and doughnuts" with community leaders, judges, social workers, government officials, heads of institutions, and so on. The field projects were planned very carefully. Indeed, the instructors spent the whole month preceding the opening of the summer session in planning these projects. By and large, they involved placements in various social agencies.