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Examines the expansion of media public opinion research in the United States from 1937 to 1987. Polling by media agencies was sporadic before the 1960's, with media outlets often relying on data from research agencies for published public opinion samples. Throughout the 1970's there was a dramatic increase in the frequency of media polls that continued into the 1980's. The proliferation of polls compromised the quality of the research, suffered from overemphasis on data derived from predictive sources such as exit polling, and created an environment of conflicting research findings confusing to the American electorate and policymakers. Regulations of polling procedures and formal training sessions by journalist-pollsters have helped counter the potentially negative influence of mass media polling.

Sociological practice and applied sociology have long held an ambiguous status within the profession. A major source of tension has been the debate over the utility of knowledge: one faction views sociology as inescapably involved with societal problems and social action; another faction seeks scientific status and academic acceptance. In recent years, sociological practice and applied sociology have received greater recognition within the ASA. In the future, the vitality of the sociological enterprise will depend more upon its perceived social utility man its academic standing. The demand for useful knowledge and skills in social analysis will grow as a result of the increasing need for program assessments and the need to democratically "manage "diverse ethnic and cultural differences in the common interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article comments on a paper by David Jenness, which focused on the efforts of the Consortium of Social Science Associations (COSSA) in organizing the social sciences in their own interest. The future of federal support for sociology will depend on the continued mobilization efforts of COSSA and upon public recognition of sociological contributions to the realization of two prime sets of values. Much has been written since 1981, when Reaganism became the guiding hand and official ideology at the federal level, of the need for new academic-industry partnerships. Most often, research training and subject-matter expertise were the initial factors to employment. Marketable skills opened opportunities that would have been shut to someone simply proclaiming sociology as his or her trade or profession. The virtues of a range of sociological skills are recognized much more readily: for information and intelligence, for systems analysis and design, for social trend analysis and forecasting, and in general for systematic scouting of the environment within which organized efforts in the public and private sectors operate, flourish, or decline. Herbert Costner once referred to this aspect of applied work as reconnaissance sociology.

This article presents a commentary on a paper by Paul Kay in a previous issue of The American Sociologist which analyzed the growth of a mythical enthusiasm for nonacademic employment in anthropology and other disciplines in the U.S. Kay proposes three tests for labeling this as an ideology, that it is demonstrably false and it serves to maintain the status quo. According to the commenter, he has seen very little evidence that the field of sociology is suffused with a growing enthusiasm about prospects for jobs outside academia. The American Sociological Association's (ASA) Expanding Employment Opportunities Committee's attempts to define the problem and to suggest useful steps to be taken to deal with it have hardly struck fire either at the grays roots or at the ASA Council level. Skepticism has been expressed as to whether the problem of a declining academic job market is not simply temporary, and thus not deserving of curriculum revision, recruiting cutbacks or some other organized response. Kay defends his second point, that the belief is false, mainly by referring to the competitive disadvantage of anthropologists in seeking to supplant others now holding nonacademic jobs or when offering their services at the same time as others displaced by the same market forces.