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Considerable attention has been given recently to the perplexing problem of the relationship between attitudes and behavior (Ehrlich, 1969; Deutscher, 1969; Warner and DeFleur, 1969; Ajzen et al., 1970; Lastrucci, 1970; Tarter, 1970). Methodological issues have been debated, the lack of congruence between attitudes and behavior has been examined, and a variety of solutions have been offered. We are told, for example, that the continuing poor correlation between measured attitudes and overt behavior requires us to search for the intervening variable or variables which apparently obtain (Ehrlich, 1969); or to employ the "direct observation" of the phenomenon under investigation rather than try to extrapolate from paper-and-pencil tests to behavior (Deutscher, 1969); or to develop theories that, in turn, enable us to find indicators that are more valid than the paper-and-pencil type (Lastrueci, 1970); or to simply admit that attitudes as "presently conceptualized play no real role in behavior" (Tarter, 1970). A number of important aspects of attitude research, however, have been obscured or omitted in these discussions. For the surprising aspect of the situation is not, as has often been implied, the lack of congruence between attitudes and behavior, but the persistent use of research designs that are inappropriate for the complexity of the subject under investigation. Further, it is surprising that researchers have failed to draw out other important implications of their research. That is, the fact that an attitude does not lead directly to a behavior does not justify the assertion that attitudes play no role in behavior, or that attitude research lacks significant implications for social life. The basis for this latter statement will be shown below in a discussion of the values of attitude research. It may be that inadequate research designs, valued for their simplicity rather than their appropriateness, are a manifestation of the "publish or perish" syndrome. In any ease, this paper attempts to outline the problems and the values of attitude research, and to demonstrate thereby that such research is of great significance for the understanding of social phenomena. If that significance seems minimized by those studies that have found poor correlation between attitudes and behavior, the fault lies both in the failure to create research designs that reflect the complexity of the problem and in the tendency to exalt the importance of the proximate causes of overt behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author clarifies the points made by critic Leonard Beeghley about his sociological research on four function paradigm. The critic is correct in his contention that the paper missed the point on the dual application in the four function paradigm. The reasons why the paper never went too far with the argument is the lack of necessity to do so. However, the author examined the propositions upon which the four function paradigm is based and finding them contradictory, felt there was no need to deal with the applications of the paradigm that depended upon the validity of the propositions. Furthermore, the difficulties in the paradigm are so abundant that quite independent additional arguments can be advanced against it. Thus, while the argument presented in the research that the paradigm's foundational propositions are contradictory, the arguments presented in the research is quite sufficient.

One of the major gaps in research in TST measured self-conception is data relevant to the assumption that self-conception is a stable structure of meanings attached to self. This paper indicates the inconsistency between current theoretical and empirical orientations in the area of self-conception and outlines three basic models of the processual characteristics of self-conception found in the literature. Using a ten wave panel design in which self-conception is measured repeatedly throughout the subjects' daily interactional routines, specific hypotheses derived from the models are tested. Results suggest which model is most appropriate for the description of the processual characteristics of various aspects of self-conception and the possible errors involved in the continued use of current self-conception research designs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a discussion related to Jack P. Gibbs' work on analytical typologies in criminology. Gibbs treated as problematic an issue that has been closed for students in the field for sometime. The research was competent, its limitations clearly spelled out for the reader, and the results carefully tied to theory. Certainly, none of the others have attracted as much attention. Expectedly, the best scholarship was to be found among the papers on social theory. Unfortunately, most of these were agonizing efforts over where sociology has been and ineffectual attempts to redirect activity in a more promising direction. One has to constantly remind oneself that sociology began with three interests in mind, a distinctive subject matter, social reform, and the application of the scientific method to social behavior; that one is perilously close to forsaking the first two in mindless deference to the last in that important questions go unasked because one cannot attack them scientifically; that the questions one asks are becoming more and more scientific but more and more trivial, and, in so doing, one is, if not becoming psychologists, following psychology down the path to intellectual oblivion.