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The article throws light on the psychology of attitudes and gives insight into one aspect of newspaper behavior. An analysis of the rumors regarding communist leader Joseph Stalin's real or pretended illness in thirty newspapers in Paris, France revealed that the papers tended to publish rumors that arced with their political attitudes. Anti-communist papers published rumors stressing Stalin's illness and a crisis in Russia; communist papers ignored the subject or carried rumors denying the illness and crisis. Studies such as this might be used as a test for listing and grouping papers according to their political attitudes. Studies have been made repeatedly showing that the news content of newspapers is influenced by their editorial political attitudes. Less attention has been paid to the question of susceptibility to editorial manipulation. The collection of all rumor echoes in daily newspapers was undertaken during a period of four months. All news items, which had a particular character of vagueness, lack of authority regarding their source or outright improbability, were included regardless of whether or not rumor as a source was specifically mentioned.

This section of the Quarterly is reserved for brief reports of research in progress, discussions of unsolved problems, methodological studies, and public opinion data not extensively analyzed or interpreted. Succinct case histories are welcomed, as well as hypotheses and insights that may be useful to other students of public opinion. Usually, material in this section will be shorter, more informal, and more tentative than in the preceding pages of the Quarterly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an analyzes of effectiveness of questionnaire technique of gathering data in behavioral sciences. The reason for the wider use of the paper and pencil technique in any area of the study of human behavior has been its relative simplicity and its wider coverage. The questionnaire technique of gathering data in the behavioral sciences has been subjected to increasing criticism. The criticism has varied from attacks on specific techniques and studies to categoric dismissal of all attitude investigations as useless "verbalizations in response to symbolic abstractions." One of the most serious weaknesses of the paper and pencil approach is that the symbolized responses of a subject in a test situation may not truly indicate one's response in a situation calling for non-verbalized action. It is believed that questionnaires are instruments of doubtful accuracy for measuring even ideological behavior. The conclusion is that more research into the accuracy and consistency of questionnaire responses is needed.

Here are three studies in opinion climatology which were presented at an American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) symposium during 1960 conference in Atlantic City. These papers are devoted to expositions of a technique for relating social structural variables to opinion, a technique which has attracted increased attention during the past few years. Opinion is surely not formed in a social vacuum, it cannot be understood without an understanding of its relations to its environment. Attempts to account for either the distribution of opinion on an issue or differences in the distribution observed among various subgroups of a sample of people have been a standard feature of public opinion research for several decades. On the simplest level, cross-tabulations by age, sex, socio-economic status, or place of residence constitute attempts of this kind. In short, quite apart from their substantive contributions, these three papers serve to illustrate some of the methodological procedures which are today on the frontier of opinion and attitude research.

This article focuses on the direct influence of newspapers on public opinion on certain specific public issues. The aim is to discover to what extent a person's attitude on public questions, on which the press is assumed to be so influential, correlates with the attitude on these questions of the newspaper to which he is most frequently exposed. For this purpose 940 of the residents of the city of Seattle were selected at random. 590 men and 350 women were interviewed and schedules filled out with their answers. For the purpose of this inquiry, four public questions which had been prominently before the electorate within the last eight months preceding the investigation were selected and each person asked his position on these questions. In a different connection the person was asked what newspaper he read most frequently. The results of this part of the inquiry indicates the degree of relationship, or lack of relationship, between the readers' attitude on a public question and the attitude of the newspaper which each group read most frequently.

This paper discusses the serious lag that exists in the synthesis and transmission of knowledge concerning the aged and in its utilization to meet human needs. Social work education should exercise leadership in challenging rather than reflecting inappropriate attitudes and approaches at every level from individual case management to social planning of broad programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an earlier paper in this journal,* the author suggested that the processes of attitude change underlying mass communication impact are of two kinds: with low involvement to persuasive stimuli one might look for gradual shifts in perceptual structure, aided by repetition, activated by behavioral choice situations, and followed at some time by attitude change, while with high involvement one could look instead [or the classic and familiar conflict of ideas at the level of conscious opinion and attitude that precedes changes in behavior. The present paper describes the development and application of a workable tool to measure this involvement, a necessary step in the study of communication impact along these lines is to proceed further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents response of the author to the comments of psychologist M. Brewster Smith to the article of the author published in the fall 1953 issue of the journal "The Quarterly," concerning methodological distinction between opinions and attitudes. Smith sets forth the basis for his comments in his third and fourth paragraphs. Having found much of merit in the author's paper, he feels, on second thought that it may be just a piece of special pleading, so he comments "closer inspection leads one to suspect, however, that Wiebe is actually relegating attitudes to the realm of the trivial and academic, serious and practical people should, if they follow his analysis, devote themselves to the study of opinion, where to be sure, more exacting criteria of validation have to be met, but the pay-off in predictive power seems proportionately greater." Having stated what he suspects, Smith continues, "it is my contention, and the reason for this commentary, that this aspect of Wiebe's position, which I would regard as unfortunate, is a consequence of unacceptable starting points in his chain of reasoning."

The present research attempts to determine if the notion of separate theories for prejudice and discrimination, as put forth by Rose, is viable. The paper examines, as a result of differential responses to selected situational variables, some of the reasons wily nonprejudiced subjects discriminate against blacks and prejudiced subjects do not. The situational variables (social constraint and social distance) were experimentally introduced in a field setting. The paper concludes by agreeing with Rose's contention that separate theories for prejudice and discrimination are necessary. However, the authors take exception with the idea that theories of discrimination are sufficient to explain discriminatory behavior. In particular, in order to better understand discriminatory behavior, the argument is set forth that instead of restricting the scope of investigation, as suggested by Rose, it should be enlarged by including other relevant variables which have been shown to have an impact on discriminatory behavior. Other studies have indicated that conformity tendencies are often involved in producing behaviors which are inconsistent with attitudes. It is suggested that some measures of these, as well as of attitudes, should be included in future studies of discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a report of a study of changed attitudes toward Whites resulting from the service experiences of 219 African Americans veterans. Roughly one half of these veterans attended Virginia State College, Petersburg, Virginia, and the other half hailed from Virginia Union University in Richmond, Virginia, during the school years 1946-1950. The method used in securing the data was the collection of human or personal documents. The men in the sample answered a series of questions which provided an outline for autobiographical reports. Each man wrote a paper a week for eighteen weeks, each paper covering one of the eighteen sub-periods into which the military service period was divided. Of the 219 servicemen, 75% entered the service of their country with negative attitudes toward Whites. The most important change associated with military service is a marked overall improvement in attitude, that is, a shift from a more negative to a less negative or to a positive attitude toward Whites. It is concluded that experiences in World War II produced an overall change and improvement in the attitudes toward Whites of the Southern-born African American veterans, but that no comparable favorable attitude change characterized the Northern-born veterans.

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 examines whether the knowledge, skills, and attitudes required for casework and group work practice are so much alike that the present distinctions in education and practice have become outdated. It is opined that both casework and group work draw upon the same body of basic professional knowledge, share the same values and attitudes, direct their helping efforts toward essentially the same social ends. However, there are substantial differences in the range and types of activities carried by group workers, and some of these activities, perhaps, reflect the faces of education and recreation more clearly than the face of social works. The complexity of the group worker's job, which frequently includes in one and the same assignment service to individuals, suggests a combination of learning experiences in the educational program that would have a different configuration and emphasis than those provided for cases workers. In the author's opinion, new dimensions in casework, group work, and community organization practice will inevitably affect the future of social work education.

This article shows the pervasive nature of the bias both by substantive topic investigated and by population method in the study of blue-collar workers. The data for this paper are from a study of the social and political characteristics of members of the United Automobile Workers (UAW) union. A sample of 226 members of the UAW local were randomly selected and mailed questionnaires. A total of 26.5 per cent returned the instruments after the first mailing. Since past research has shown that those returning differ significantly from those who do not, a second mailing was made to the 166 not responding to the first mailing. Twenty-seven per cent responded to the second mailing. The total percentage of the sample responding to both mailing was 46.5. The data obtained by the questionnaire may be classified into two major types: the personal and political characteristics of the respondents, and their attitude toward the union's participation in political affairs. Specific measures of personal and political characteristics include political party preference, political preferences of family of orientation presidential candidate voted for in 1960, attitude toward the Federal government, attitude toward the United Nations, political activities such as writing letters to Congressmen, frequency of talking politics, job satisfaction, and estimation of potential for occupational mobility.

The literature on opinion and attitude change continues to probe deeper. The author of this paper argues that attitude change is a function not merely of attitude toward an object but also of attitude toward a situation. This proposition further complicates the study of expressed opinion change and Behavior change in relation to attitude, and leads the author to consider several new methods for assessing attitude change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the author reports the results of a carefully planned and extensive public opinion survey designed to ascertain probable reactions of Turkish couples to a government program of family planning. Also, the survey undertook to weigh the possible usefulness of the mass media and the political and spiritual leaders in the villages in winning support for the program, particularly among the villagers. The value of a public opinion survey in implementing public policy in this situation is clearly underscored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The special issue of the periodical "Public Opinion Quarterly" devoted to Attitude Change has elicited great interest. In the article presented here it has drawn sharp criticism with respect to its treatment of psychologist Fritz Heider's concept of cognitive balance. There are two reasons why the critique is limited to this topic. First, the treatment of cognitive balance is especially blatant, and scholarship, like the widely known curate's egg, has that all-or-nothing quality that it cannot be good in spots. Second, although cognitive balance is presently associated with several other conceptual approaches as if they are all birds of a feather, it is at least author's strong bias that they are not. In terms of both profundity and potential, Heider's thinking stands in a class by itself. At best the other approaches focus upon special limited aspects of Heider's more general thought, at worst they are superficial simplifications. As a result of the poor scholarly treatment of Heider's thinking, the significant difference between him and the others is effaced, and this is unfortunate. Cognitive balance refers to configurational properties of the picture men have of the world they live in. Each of us carries within him a picture of the world that consists of entities, human beings and non-human objects, and the relationships existing between them.

Sociologist Louis Guttman has conceived of two methods for placing individuals into relative positions along an attitude continuum. One method, that which is conventionally used, makes use of the observed marginals of selected items from an attitude universe to obtain cutting points or scale ranks. The second method and the one with which this study deals, is that of utilizing bending points of the regressions of higher principal components of scalable attitudes to obtain the various cutting points. Of the two methods, the latter, utilizing measures of principal components, is thought to be superior because of its quality of "invariance," that is, the cutting points are not dependent on the sample of items used. This paper reports the findings of a study which proposed to re-examine Guttman's "closure" as an empirical third component of scalable attitudes, and to introduce another psychological variable, suggested by Talcott Parsons, the sensitivity of the human personality to the attitudes of others, and test its empirical fit to the mathematical model of the third component.

Methodological advances of the past 20 years have been sparked by the development of opinion research centers, by the expansion of government-sponsored research during World War II, by the professional associations, and not least by the polling debacle of 1948. These advances have been reflected in a series of outstanding, and increasingly sophisticated, studies. Research methodology has been adapted to a wider field of subject matter, rapid strides have been made in attitude measurement techniques, and principal sampling problems have been partially solved. To see clearly the advances in survey and attitude research methods which have taken place during the past two decades, one should start a bit farther back. Much of the present stage of technological advance in opinion research is foreshadowed by Stuart A. Rice in the papers he published during the 1920s and assembled in 1928 in his "Quantitative Methods in Politics." They are also reflected by George Lundberg in his "Social Research," published in 1929.

This paper embodies the findings of a field study made of communication of modern ideas and knowledge into some Indian villages. The diffusion into seven villages of the following modern ideas and kinds of knowledge was studied. The intellectual perspective of the villages makes for greater communicability of certain items. Both intranational and international items of communication were analyzed. Limited as the sample of each of these was, however, they brought out the relative predominance of knowledge of local over world events. Interviewing and observation were the main tools. The schedule containing the questions had sometimes to be kept in the background. Experience in the villages proves that greater information can be obtained by informal chats and discussions than by asking straight questions. Questions had to be mixed with a good deal of other conversation. Certain broad conclusions emerge from the study. As is revealed by the scalogram, it is not merely the distance from or nearness to the city that facilitates communication of ideas and knowledge. The social structure also determines the qualitative and quantitative content of the communications that are assimilated.

A frequent problem in polling public opinion is to try to find from a sample the number or percentage of people in the country who hold differing attitudes on a particular issue. A common method is to use the answers to a single question on a poll to estimate the percentages of people in the nation who, for example, favor or oppose the given issue. The complexity of most social issues, however, makes this procedure of very limited value. The purpose of this paper is to supply a method of estimating from the responses to several questions, the proportions of people in the country who belong to these categories. In attempting to estimate population proportions in attitude categories, it may either be impossible to ask a single determining question, or one can doubt the ability or truthfulness of an individual in categorizing himself. Under such conditions any attempt to estimate these proportions must utilize the information supplied by a battery of questions related to the attitude.

This paper is concerned simply with surveying the correlation between two forms of prejudice (anti-Semiticism and anti-Negro attitudes) and various subvarieties of religious and political attitudes. It includes an examination of the correlations between the two varieties of prejudice and eight dimensions of religious attitudes and 13 dimensions of political attitudes. The research was conducted in four undergraduate university student populations: (1) midwestern urban, (2) midwestern rural, (3) southern urban, and (4) southern rural. The analysis reveals relatively strong correlations between political conservatism and the dimensions of bigotry in all the populations, and strong correlations between religiosity and bigotry in the southern populations. Kendall's coefficient of concordance disclosed that the ranking of the correlations is significantly similar in the populations examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to present a tentative model for a "manipulative" theory of attitude change. This statistic or a given belief is proposed as a measure of the amount of attitude gain which would be realized if a constant effort were made to change this belief in a favorable direction. The assumption that the attitude gains obtained from the static data are adequate predictors of the actual changes which would occur dynamically and the assumption that when changes in belief are induced, the pattern of these changes is such that the probability of belief shifts into categories is approximately proportional to the frequencies of people occupying these categories. Some evidence in support of this model is available. This evidence shows that recommendations which would have been made on the basis of potential effectiveness scores are entirely consistent with the attitude changes which were actually found to be attributable to each of five appeals. This suggests that notwithstanding the simplifying assumptions inherent in the model, the model merits serious further investigation.

This article discusses a study conducted in the U.S. in the 1970s which examined the existence of the phenomenon of attitude-related concealment of identity, at least in the setting of newspaper letters to the editor. The first part of the study undertook to determine whether any relationship exists between a person's attitudinal stance and his tendency to reveal or conceal his identity. The killing by police of a black juvenile burglary suspect provided a clear issue about which letter writers' knowledge would be approximately equal and which evoked enough letters to permit statistical comparisons. The 44 letters on this issue published in the Columbus Dispatch between February 6 and February 11, 1970 were judged as pro-police, anti-police, or noncodable. Two judges, working independently, agreed on the classifications of 42 of the 44 letters. Letters that concluded with a surname in some form were classified as signed. Those that had only initials or a pen name were classified as anonymous. Of the 41 letters that were judged pro or anti-police, 75 percent of the anti-police letter-writers signed their names, compared to only 38 percent of the pro-police subjects. The observed significant tendency for letter-writers expressing pro-police attitudes to conceal their identity could be explained by a number of hypotheses.

Research has consistently shown that anomia, measured by Srole's scale, is more prevalent in the lower than in the higher social classes, but little research has dealt with variations in anomia within given status levels. This paper presents survey data bearing on three hypotheses, which relate aspects of status to variations in anomia within status levels. The data fail to support the status inconsistency hypothesis that inconsistent statuses lead to anomia, or the social failure hypothesis that differential failure to achieve life goals explains variations in anomia within status levels. A third hypothesis, consistent with their own and earlier research findings, is tentatively advanced though it cannot be fully tested with the data at hand, the attitudinal exposure hypothesis, which asserts that among people currently at the same status level, those with more past exposure to the anomic attitudes of lower-status groups will be more anomic. Research has consistently shown that anomia, as measured by sociologist Leo Srole's well known scale, is more prevalent in the lower than in the higher social classes. An examination of Srole's definition of anomia and the items in his scale makes it clear why one would expect this to be so.

From a medical point of view, the pregnant woman may be regarded as one who is ill in the sense of the Victorian lady-in-waiting. She may, on the other hand, be regarded as a person who is experiencing a normal life-interlude. The latter point of view is evidenced to some extent by the growing interest in natural childbirth. In addition, pregnancy may also be regarded as decidedly sociological insofar as it has implications for social behavior. From such a frame of reference, pregnancy may be regarded as a social role. The purpose of this research was to continue investigation of an hypothesis concerning the social sources of differences in the role expectations of expectant mothers. Some associations between measures of social instability and the expression of sick role expectations during pregnancy have been reported in this research paper. Measures of conflicts in cultural values and of self-esteem were used as indicators of social instability. The motivation to enact the role of the sick during pregnancy might tend to serve as a means by which the woman can disengage herself from her usual social status and its associated role requirements which may in fact be the basis for her low self-esteem. The social functions of the sick role may not be sufficiently understood to explain the association between sick role expectations and conflicts in cultural values.

Despite considerable efforts to remold the public's image of the mental patient, hospitalization for psychiatric reasons continues to result in invidious evaluations of the patient by his community associates. As a consequence of current attitudes toward mental illness, feelings of shame, inferiority and disgrace on the part of patients and their family members are looked upon as almost inevitable concomitants of hospitalization. The current attitudes toward mental illness that are held by community members and their resulting detrimental effects on patients and their families, are often regarded as a major barrier to the reintegration of formerly hospitalized persons into the community. This phenomenon of stigma is the focus of the analysis reported in this paper: specifically, an attempt to identify feelings of stigma among relatives of formerly hospitalized patients by means of structured questions is discussed and the relationships between feelings of stigma and various social and psychological characteristics of these family members are described.

The author wishes to consider in this paper that peculiar nature of the parent-child relationship which proves to be a causal factor in parent-child conflict. There are three elements which family life affords to an especial degree, and which constitute at once the source of some of its deepest satisfactions and the basis for some of its strongest conflicts. The author refer to the well recognized elements of duration, intimacy and continuity of contact. The dominance of the parent may be viewed as extending to three general fields: the physical, the psychological and the social. In actual experience the three are interrelated and interfused. Persons experience other relationships of super-ordination and subordination, but no one of them approaches the parent child relationship in degree of dominance on the part of the superior. From a sociological standpoint, parent and child stand in the same position with reference to each other as master and slave. To the parent society delegates the task of bringing the child's impulses into conformity with the prevailing culture. There is no natural direction of the child's impulses into socially approved behavior patterns.

Although communication may take place more easily among people who share similar attributes and have similar attitudes and beliefs, such communication may be in large measure redundant: no new information enters the system, For the diffusion of new information, the existence of some "heterophilous" relationships seems to be a structural prerequisite. The following article offers evidence bearing on this proposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents abstracts of several studies related to attitude change and opinion formation. Frank Lindenfeld analyzed some of the social factors that contributed to the passage of an initiative that made laws against racial discrimination in housing unconstitutional. Godwin Chu investigated the impact of mass communication on modernization in an experimental design in a Chinese cultural setting. Alvin J. Silk reported the results of a study concerned with the question of whether there is a significant amount of overlap among self-designated opinion leaders in a fairly limited sphere, namely for a variety of dental products and services. Sidney R. Adelman investigated the relationship between types of physicians and their methods of prescribing drugs. Edyth S. Short explored certain organizational and communication systems, personality traits, and social interaction patterns among the staff of a medical institute engaged in clinical and laboratory research and teaching to identify some of the qualities that facilitate scientific research. Selma F. Monsky focused on special problems in achieving respondent accessibility in longitudinal studies. Hugh Schwartz focused on marketing research group interview.

This article examines the appropriateness of the eighteenth-century press as a source reflecting the political attitudes of colonial Americans, based on the assumption that content analysis is a useful tool for studying such attitudes. Newspapers are still the most important tools in expressing and shaping public opinion. Although it may be impossible to measure the influence of the colonial newspaper directly, the conclusion that it was an important means of communication in colonial American does not seem unwarranted. Its continuous publication at regular weekly intervals enabled the printers to expose the colonists to a certain body of news and opinion, as well as to certain patterns of symbol usage, over a long period of time. The life span of many newspapers is indirect evidence that the colonists were willing to accept or at least to read the news and opinions offered. Content-analysis research bases the size of samples upon the degree of sensitivity to trends needed for testing a set of hypotheses.

This article presents a method for selecting adjective pairs, from semantic differential data, for use in an attitude scale. The selected adjectives are submitted to Guttman scale analysis, producing a scale with high reproducibility and scalability. The method can produce some economy in research. Many times semantic differential data are used to produce profiles, for distance analysis, or for some other purpose. An attitude score, because of its close relationship with the evaluative factor in the semantic differential, is almost always present in the data. If data have already been gathered, the method illustrated in this article could be used to determine the set of adjectives to be used in an attitude scale. If the study were in its development stages, analysis of pre-test data could help determine which adjectives would be most useful as an attitude scale in the final study. A scale developed by the method outlined in this article will naturally be specific to the concept or attitudinal dimension around which it was developed. Such a scale might not work well when applied to another attitudinal dimension.

A little-discussed but often-used technique in survey research is the retrospective question. The retrospective question is described by Patricia Kendall and Paul F. Lazarsfeld as, asking the respondents to recall what their attitudes were at some earlier period, one attempts to reconstruct what would have been observed had there been a previous interview. The writers also point to some possible objections to the retrospective question. Namely, responses may be inaccurate and attitudes and events may be remembered selectively. Also, there is the question of specifying time. Failure to demonstrate a relationship between subjective and actual change may therefore be a result of not permitting respondents either sufficient range of response categories or sufficient range of subject matter in which to reflect change. In any event, for the available tests of the retrospective question, there is evidence that this measure of change correlates with attitude change as measured by the panel technique. The direction of change among "attitude changers" is reflected in their own reports of their changes in attitude.

This article presents a case history regarding measuring the effectiveness of an overseas information campaign which was designed to permit comparison of the attitudes of a cross- section of adults in Salonica, Greece, who were interviewed after the advertisements ran in the press. To overcome any possible "panel effect," the second wave of interviews was conducted not only with the same people who had been in the original sample, but also with another parallel cross-section of the population, a sample whose members had not been interviewed previously. Changes in opinion between the first and second survey periods might have occurred quite independently of the advertising campaign, through the impact of world events or of political developments in Greece. For example, attitudes toward the United States might have become more favorable between the first and second wave of the study because of a general improvement in opinion throughout the country rather than as a result of the advertisement campaign. Opinion might have remained above the same in Salonica, while it became less favorable elsewhere in Greece.

The principal question to be examined herein is, "What attitudes do people have toward questionnaires and the interviewing process"? A secondary problem is, "Do people have any stereotyped impressions of the role of the interviewer?" Finally, "Do divergent social groups within a community respond differently with regard to these matters?" For the purpose of seeking out suggestive answers to the foregoing questions two census tracts in the city of Austin, Texas, were surveyed by members of the writer's class on research methods. The tracts were chosen with a view to certain socio-economic differences. One had the highest median income and, aside from the university residential area, ranked first in median years of school completed. The other was one of the lowest in terms of education and had a relatively low income according to the 1950 Census. It was selected over still lower socio-economic tracts because its composition was predominantly "Anglo-American" rather than "Latin-American" or Negro; the ethnic variable was therefore minimized.

The article presents a case study of the attitude of Russian workers in Germany during World War II, towards the problem of interpreting attitude survey data. As mentioned in the article, the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey found that the Russian workers were most anti-Germans during the war, based on responses given by French, Italian and Russian workers in Germany. However, as maintained by the authors, the same data may be interpreted, to mean that the Russian workers were actually more favorable to the Germans than were the other groups. This reinterpretation also appears to fit certain facts now available regarding foreign workers in Germany, better than does the interpretation put forward by the Bombing Survey. A possible explanation for the original interpretation is afforded by the theory that new data, including survey data, tend to be incorporated in an existing cognitive structure. Moreover, the complexity of international attitudes also contributes to the difficulty of interpreting statements of individuals as to what they think about other national groups.

Although we live in an era of rapid industrial change, little is understood of the phenomenology of change in job content. This paper reports a study in which attitudes toward work-related change were found to vary with social class background, social class identification, and position in the status structure of the work organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the attitudinal correlations of social participation. Attitudes reflecting a basic outlook on life may be expected to be related to social participation in two ways: First, those who have certain attitudes are more likely to be drawn into social participation than those who have opposing attitudes. Second, social participation tends to develop a certain outlook on life which nonparticipants are less likely to acquire. Nevertheless, it is of theoretical and practical significance to ascertain the mere fact of correlation between social participation and the kinds of attitudes people shall consider. The attitudes that are the subject of study in this paper are some of those referring to respondents' own lives, other people, or society in general. Thus, the greater the extent to which a person participates in organized activity, the greater is his opportunity to internalize the meanings and values which constitute the culture. In this study, the reciprocal relationship between theory-construction and empirical research is exemplified. The theory has led to hypotheses which, when tested, confirm the theory. At the same time, this test has raised questions regarding the variable functioning of factors included in the theory and thus provides a means for further specification of the theory.

In this article, the author makes his comment on social psychology. According to the author, social psychology may have done a bad service to public opinion research in its focus on such concepts as personality. Devotees of this school of thought look at opinion from the point of view of intra-psychic development. In order to change political attitudes, they must first deal with some childhood fantasy. Thus opinions and prejudices become rooted in the personality, which in turn is rooted in the culture. Two social psychologists have directed attention to relationships within the society, and to relationships between the individual and his society. The individual's opinion thus becomes more meaningful when viewed against the background of social factors. These studies suggest a number of leads which, if followed, might produce significant studies. For instance, people can organize an opinion survey around the concept of reference groups to learn something about the ease or difficulty with which individuals change their reference groups and can inquire into the hierarchical structure of reference groups.

Five factors in the relationship between the client and his research agency play a strategic part in influencing the duration of this relationship and the kind of research which it produces. This paper explores their implications and urges more studies of these points by social scientists. The first deals with the need for a more systematic definition of the several roles and obligations which the client and researcher assume. The second explores the different concepts of time and scope which the client and his research agency may bring to the study of a problem.

Children have very low levels of response stability on many questions commonly used in political socialization studies, particularly those measuring attitudes. This article incorporates evidence from a three-wave panel survey into a discussion of some possible causes of low stability. The findings suggest changes in the established methodology of substantive studies of children's attitudes and a reevaluation of the generalizations arising from these stud. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social workers have traditionally been reluctant to participate in coalitions, despite the evidence that only those interest groups that do will have serious impact on legislative and social change. A number of successful examples of the use of the coalition illustrate changing attitudes on the part of social work organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monitoring equipment can be uncomfortable and even painful when connected to a patient and its mere presence can produce anxiety. It is possible to reduce these effects to some extent, and by adequate explanation and reassurance to persuade the patient to accept techniques which are used in his own interest. The nursing staff will accept and use equipment, even though it is quite complex, if they are convinced primarily that it is necessary for the patient and reliable, and secondarily not too time consuming to look after. The equipment used for monitoring at the moment is too unreliable to be accepted confidently as a warning device. There is a need for much more reliable equipment in this field, but it is unlikely that the number of nurses required for an intensive care unit could be reduced. It is generally agreed that there is a need for a technician experienced in electronics equipment to maintain and service these machines. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In Part I, which appeared in the January 1971 issue, the author discussed how the welfare system has been used to enforce totalitarian control on recipients. This article discusses the tactical and strategic guidelines for organizers of recipient groups that flow from the theoretical issues of totalitarianism. The subject of equal worth is addressed from three aspects: (1) the recipient's own sense of equal worth, (2) society's commitment to the equal worth of all of its members, and (3) social workers' attitudes about equal worth in their role as advisers to poverty groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes a group work program devoted to changing the child-rearing attitudes and practices of lower-class mothers of preschool children. The two group approaches are analyzed in terms of their effectiveness in attaining the goals of the program. In addition, several issues and some unexpected side effects of the program are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hospitalized patients with congestive heart failure, were compared with those with other diagnoses to determine the relative significance of emotional factors in the possible precipitation of symptoms. Patients' attitudes about their diagnoses and living arrangements were examined with significant results for hospital care and discharge planning for patients with congestive heart failure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study of conflict between physicians and social workers in a hospital concentrates on their expectations of the social worker's role and their perceptions of each other's expectations. The authors found considerable disagreement over what the social worker's responsibilities are to be and confusion about what each group thought of the other. However, there Is some awareness of this conflict and it is hoped that this can provide a basis for mutual exploration and possible resolution of some of the con Riding role expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Birth control has been given too little attention by social workers because In the past they have overemphasized psychological motivation, furthermore, the traditional casework approach to unmarried mothers seems to be inappropriate for the lower class and may be inhibiting the development of more meaningful and creative programs for this group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the use unprofessional work with the aged in work. The author states that the shortage of professional social workers and the possibility of using nonprofessional personnel to supplement professional services in social agencies have been receiving attention for some time. The shortage of social work personnel has had a particularly severe impact in the field of the aging, not only because demand exceeds supply, but because work with older people seems to carry less appeal than some other fields, such as work with children. Cultural attitudes toward the aged and the assumption that work with older clients will not yield effective results and rewards have been major factors. At the Benjamin Rose Institute of Cleveland, for instance, many candidates interviewed for social work positions have expressed initial reservations and skepticism about working with older people. Students placed in the agency for field practice frequently express disappointment and question what they can learn from work with older people with older people. This attitude changes markedly when the worker or student discovers that most aged clients have as many potentials for continued growth and adjustment as they have had all through life and that youth is not a time of life, but a state of mind.