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This article comments on a survey on the media of mass communication in Poland conducted by the Public Opinion Research Centre of Polish Radio and TV. Among the many surveys conducted by the Centre those on the media of mass communication, particularly radio and TV, form a separate series of research projects carried out within the last few years. A short description of this research and the methods used will be given. A survey dealing with urban use of the press and wireless as well as opinions on information given by press and radio received from these sources was conducted in March 1959. The questionnaire was distributed to two samples. The first one comprising 1,300 persons in various towns, the second, approximately 800 persons in Warsaw. All respondents were over the age of 18. Survey in one of the voivodship towns to discover what changes were likely to occur in the circulation of two morning daily papers if one of them was changed to an evening paper was conducted in May 1959. The questionnaire was issued on a Sunday to every n-th person buying a paper at a kiosk. The sample comprised about 1,200 people. Survey on the interest shown in the economic information provided by press and radio, and people's opinion of this information was conducted in May 1960. Questionnaire was issued to a sample of about 800 members of the adult population of Warsaw.

The article focuses on a seminar on the use of public opinion surveys, held in Warsaw, Poland from September 1-20, 1958. The seminar was attended by French and Polish professors and research workers. For the first week the seminar dealt with the place which sampling occupies, or could occupy in the methodology of the main social sciences. During the following two weeks, the discussions concerned a number of sampling surveys that had been conducted in France and Poland. The seminar opened with a study of economic behavior patterns. The organization of Poland's economy has been severely criticized and a genuine attempt at reconstructing the economic system has been under way. The necessity of the study of scientific organization of labor was discussed. Studies of electoral sociology may simply attempt to describe an election as completely and objectively as possible, as an historical event and for the purposes of history. The Polish press and radio are playing a very important part in introducing the sampling method into Polish sociological research.

There are two chairs of sociological studies at the Jagellonian University in Cracow, Poland. One is the Chair of General Ethnography and Sociology held since 1935 by professor Kasimierz Dobrowski and the Chair of Sociology and Demography held by professor Pawel Rybicki, established in 1957. The research work in general ethnography and sociology is mainly concerned with two fundamental processes. First, the socio-cultural transformation of the rural milieu and second, the influence on the working class and its culture on the influx of rural population to towns and industrial centers. The research activity of the Chair of Sociology and Demography is concentrated on three problems. The first problem is the history of social thought. Second problem is urban sociology and the third is the demographic and sociological problems connected with the migratory movements of the population. In addition to research work paper, the two chair are also responsible for the teaching of sociology at the Faculty of Philosophy and History of the Angelina University.

Before the war, Poland had the most highly organized and productive center of sociology in Europe. It had a flourishing Sociological Institute at the University of Poznan, a first-rate scientific journal, a growing number of sociologists who were being trained for research and teaching at three universities, and extensive research activities, many of them supported by government funds, in the ecology of the city, in rural sociology, in social stratification, and in social movements. Important contributions to sociological theory and methodology, particularly in the technique of collecting and interpreting life-history material, were made in the period between the two world wars. The resurgence of Polish sociology has been as remarkable as the recovery of Poland from the devastations of war. In the country as a whole, most pre-war standards of production and cultural activity have been surpassed; similarly, sociology, in many respects, is more advanced and more active than it was before the war.