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In the fall of 1952, a chronological study has been conducted to solve the problem of community action in the Springdale community in New York. For this purpose interviews were arranged with ten different adults who had played key roles in the action. The case study is based primarily in the weekly paper, observations made by the field workers at meetings of various organizations. Additional information was also gathered by field workers through informal contacts in the community. The roles of various organizations were also analyzed.

The article presents information on the research interview and its measurement. Not only is it the most often used tool in social work practice, the interview is also an essential device in social work research. Information can be gathered by this means when no other method is either adequate or possible, yielding richer qualitative data than many other tools and techniques. However, in spite of its important qualities, the interview as a method for collecting original data in research has one major disadvantage: it fails to provide quantitative data for comparison and measurement of interviews. This paper reports attempts to measure a series of forty-eight recorded interviews together with the methods of question formulation and recording development in an attitude study undertaken by the writer in rehabilitation settings in the New York metropolitan area. The study dealt with two groups of individuals with visible and non-visible physical impairments. The primary purpose of the interviews was to collect data about the subjects' attitudes toward their disability. All forty-eight subjects were male adults of various socioeconomic levels, educational backgrounds, and occupations. Each subject had been interviewed by the same interviewer twice prior to the recorded interview to gather biographical data.

The article presents a study which explored the news flow through the Associated Press (AP) from Latin America to the U.S. The study conducted interviews with the writers and editor of the news in Latin America, observed four AP Latin American bureaus, and performed a content analysis of the copy which the Latin American bureaus transmitted. Results showed that over one third of a million words were able to be transmitted to the New York office from Latin American bureaus from June 28, 1971 to July 19, 1971. The study also revealed that the flow of news are not changing from Mondays to Saturdays.

The article discusses important aspects of observational research methodology. Psychologists with keen observation, delegated to collect data either use written documents or recorded material. The use of life history method is based on insight interviews with the view of obtaining a clear understanding of race relations and problems of an all-African American community. The New York City Department of Health used the group method on rating schedule to evaluate candidates in terms of judging their appearance, manner of speech, attitude toward the group, leadership, contribution to group performance, and scientific approach. The questionnaire is the most frequently used observational technique, having advantages over administrative economy of time, money, and effort over other methods.

The article focuses on the response accuracy of a sample of poor African American welfare mothers in New York. They were New York City residents receiving public assistance in 1966 who had been interviewed by the National Opinion Research Center for a study on the use of health services. The African American welfare mothers in the study voted much less often than other groups studied. Only 29 percent voted in the 1964 election. Nevertheless, they acknowledge their nonvoting with as much candor as other groups. Two sets of characteristics distinguish the accurate from the biased respondent on the voting questions. The biased respondent is high on community integration. The fact that the same characteristics that are associated with voting are associated with response bias distorts not only the absolute figures but also the analysis of relationships among variables. It is usually assumed that social distance between respondent and interviewer will adversely affect response accuracy. Disparities in social status were limited to socioeconomic status, education and age. It was expected that welfare mothers would give the interviewers most unlike themselves a more biased, idealized story.

The article argues that word association can be used fruitfully as an aid in penetrating further and in gaining a deeper insight into attitudes than is afforded by other opinion poll. If researchers could find a standard method of measuring the content, emotion and stability of words as symbols, they could more clearly understand the meaning of answers to poll questions and the motivations of people in the selection of words to express their thoughts in open interviews. It presents an experiment in which, 162 New York City respondents, selected at random in public places, were asked to write down the first four words or phrases which came to mind for each of a dozen words. The sample consisted of 68 percent males and 32 percent females; 47 percent had attended college, 43 percent high school and the remainder had less schooling or provided no information; the average age of respondents was 26 years. Given the same dozen words in slightly revised order to camouflage the purpose of the experiment, they were asked to go through virtually the same experiment a second time without consulting their first results.

The article focuses on a study by the American Institute of Public Opinion to discover the political ignorance and political sentiments of upstate New York towards senatorial contests. In a survey planned to serve the twin purposes of experimenting with three different methods of opinion sampling procedures, towards finding out as to which would be the most certain to prevent another 1948 U.S. presidential election unpleasantness and for predicting the outcome of the senatorial race, more than 400 people were interviewed officially. The peopled interviewed clearly pointed to a greater need for eliminating political ignorance, that could be effectively served by opinion research. However, as maintained by the author, no amount of statistics based on interviews will ever show how people truly feel regarding their pride in their politics, shame for their ignorance of political issues and candidates, eagerness to know more, reasons for voting and hesitation to speak about their voting practices. Above all, the usual survey statistics will not be able to reveal the true extent of political ignorance and the role which this ignorance plays in political behavior.