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The paper is one chapter from a larger study called "Success and Failure of Adult Probationers in Wisconsin." The problem is to compare the behavior of rural-farm probationers, rural-nonfarm probationers, and urban-nonfarm probationers with respect to certain traits in their history. These traits were age of conviction, factors in the family background, factors associated with the circumstances and conditions of the crime and of the trial, crime for which convicted, length of sentence, and period on probation. Rural- farm and urban-nonfarm differ most strikingly in their behavior on probation. The critical ratio of the standard error of difference to the actual difference between their mean violation rates was 6.8. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 reports on a preliminary study of the relative standing, in both schooling and ready knowledge, of groups of liberal and conservative U. S. adults. The article states that the findings of the study provide a new perspective on the "attitudes-enlightenment" problem, and seem to afford some clews as to where certain types of education and information campaigns might make headway and where they might encounter important psychological barriers. The article provides information about the procedures or methods taken for arranging the data for the study. One of the techniques employed in the study was "Contrasted Groups" in which people in the survey who approved or agreed with a criterion attitude question were compared on information and education with people who disapproved or disagreed with the proposition. The result or the findings were summarized in form of tables. The 16 attitude areas were indicated in the first column together with the approximate date or dates when the questions were asked, and with the putatively liberal answers in capital letters. The most obvious conclusion is, apparently, that no consistent superiority obtains for either liberals or conservatives.

A new set of first-marriage tables is compared with earlier tables that were prepared by Grabill and Jacobson. The new tables show, among other things, the number of first marriages, first-marriage probabilities, and death probabilities for single persons in a stationary (life table) population by color and sex, based on 1960 Census data on marital status and age at first marriage and on general mortality rates for 1959-61. A comparison of the earlier tables with the new tables provides evidence of a decrease of one or two years in the average age at first marriage between 1920-40 and 1958-60 and an increasing tendency for first marriages to be concentrated within a narrower span of years. The prospects for eventual marriage have risen to the point where it is estimated that all but 3 to 5 percent of the young adults are expected eventually to marry. This development has gone so far that the main question remaining is not whether young people will ever marry, but at what age they will marry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on primary, secondary and return migration in the U.S. between the period 1955 and 1960. In the course of analyzing the historical data on net intercensal migration that constituted the basic demographic data for the study of population redistribution and economic change in the U.S. between 1870 and 1950, it became necessary to formulate hypotheses that would explain certain peculiarities observable in the profiles of age-specific rates. In brief, the configuration of age-specific rates of net interstate migration and of interstate displacement of population due to migration was such that some explanation was called for in terms of probable differences between gross migration in the dominant, or prevailing, directions and gross migration in the reverse directions. For migration in general, peak rates occur in the early twenties. Dominant and reverse migration are both systematically related to age, the rates for adults first increasing then decreasing with advance in age. Return migration is present in both dominant and reverse migrations.