Behavioral and Social Science Research A National Resource, Part I (1982) / Chapter Skim
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4. The Uses of Social and Behavioral Research
4. The Uses of Social and Behavioral Research
Pages 63-92
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From page 63... ...
The chapter is divided into three sections. The first reviews three inventions that are used to generate information necessary for planning, analysis, and decision making: sample surveys, standardized tests, and economic models.
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From page 64... ...
SAMPLE SURVEYS Perhaps the single most important information-generating invention of the social sciences is the sample survey, developed over the course of the past 50 years by statisticians, sociologists, economists, political scientists, psychometricians, and survey specialists. Sample surveys consist of the collection of data in a standardized format, usually from a probability sample of a population.
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From page 65... ...
, good time series data are available on the test performance of high school and college students, health and disease rates, labor force participation rates, trends in labor force structure, and subjective phenomena, such as levels of of the samples would have an estimated proportion of Roman Catholics between 22.8 and 27.2 percent. Clearly the size of the error in any given sample is unknown if the true proportion were known, we wouldn't need a sample survey.
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From page 66... ...
Sample surveys are also widely used in the private sector, where market research has become an indispensable tool to discover consumer preferences for everything from cars to candidates. No major election is now conducted without extensive polling of the electorate, a specialized form of market research.
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From page 67... ...
One of the things social scientists use sample surveys for is to establish empirical regularities in attitudes, behavior, and social processes. Such empirical regularities-for example, the stable pattern of age-related mortality in all societies, the differential voter turnout between presidential and offyear elections, the relative invariance in markedly different societies of hierarchies of occupational prestige, the division of labor by gender, and the lower earnings of women in all industrial societies provide the building stones for theories of social structure and social process and constitute information that can inform choices made by individuals and organizations.
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From page 68... ...
Today the use of such tests has become so widespread that there are probably few Americans who have not had substantial experience with them. From its earliest beginnings the testing industry has relied heavily on psychometric theory and methods, and as psychometric research has progressed standardized tests have become more sophisticated.
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From page 69... ...
It is probably fair to say that the impact of standardized testing has been generally positive, contributing to more informed decisions about educational and vocational choices, to more efficient allocation of people to activities for which they are well suited, and hence to the enhanced realization of human potential. Arguments supporting this view are to be found in Cronbach (1970)
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From page 70... ...
ECONOMIC DATA AND ECONOMIC MODELS Despite obvious political differences about how to cure economic ills, most economic decision makers both inside and outside the government share a reliance on a set of economic indicators and decision tools that are the product of economic research conducted since World War I It is hard to imagine how the economies of the United States and other industrialized nations could function today without the kind of economic information that is now routinely available.
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From page 71... ...
The result of these efforts has been the generation of a large number of economic time series that are mutually consistent and analytically coherent. An adequate data base was a necessary precondition to the development of models of the functioning of the economy as a whole; such models have been widely used both for forecasting short-run changes in the economy and for assessing the impact of various proposed economic policies.
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From page 72... ...
to create a model of the world trade system by integrating macroeconomic models of the economies of individual countries and regions, including some eastern European countries. Efforts are just beginning to be made to incorporate the People's Republic of China into a world model.
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From page 73... ...
CHANGES IN THE WAY WE DO THINGS Concrete applications of findings from basic research in the behavioral and social sciences can be divided into two main categories: those concerned with human performance or the design of human environments and those concerned with the structuring of social, economic, and political systems. The former category mainly includes applications of psychological theory and research, principally psychophysics and learning theory.
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From page 74... ...
in Part II) has been applied to a variety of problems, including the design of alarm systems based on knowledge of how people perceive and process information; the design of devices to aid the handicapped, such as reading machines for the blind; the design of tools and workplaces based on an understanding of human capabilities; the redesign of aircraft engines to eliminate sound frequencies shown to be irritating to crew and passengers; and the decision about how much pigment to put in pavement markers.
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From page 75... ...
A different use of learning theory principles is the development of biofeedback procedures for the control of autonomic nervous system responses, such as heart rate, blood pressure, and skin temperature. It has recently been discovered, contrary to conventional wisdom, that such responses can be controlled by individuals when feedback is provided by means of electronic monitoring instruments; the feedback itself serves as a
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From page 76... ...
in Part II'. Pedagogical Applications An early application of learning theory to pedagogy was Thorndike's development of drill methods for teaching basic arithmetic and spelling skills, which dominated elementary school curricula for many years (National Research Council, 1981:1581.
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From page 77... ...
Several recent studies have observed that formal organizations frequently exhibit loose coupling between problems and solutions, between decision processes and decision outcomes, between different parts of an organization, between policies and implementation, and between action taken today and action taken yesterday. At the same time, it has been observed that organizations frequently act with imprecise or ambiguous goals, that they make inferences about the world on the basis of ambiguous information, and that they often exhibit considerable unresolved internal conflict.
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From page 78... ...
Another classic example is the tendency of students to focus their studies on what will be covered on the final examination, not on what is required to master a subject. Japanese Management Students of industrial productivity have in recent years become increasingly interested in understanding the ways in which Japanese firms are managed.
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From page 79... ...
Still, some American enthusiasts for copying Japanese management neither appreciate the irony nor consistently recognize the risks of a style that can be likened to learning French in order to read T
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From page 80... ...
When either positive or negative externalities exist, unfettered competition will involve inefficiencies that could be ameliorated by regulations, taxes, and subsidies and by recognition of new forms of property rights and rights of legal redress. In the case of finite nonrenewable resources that have to be rationed for future decades, research is necessary to appraise the degree to which the free play of market pricing will yield an optimal timing of resource exploitation.
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From page 81... ...
Of particular importance were innovations in telecommunications, the growth of the service sector and high-technology production, and the relative decline of heavy industry dependent on proximity to bulky raw materials. In consequence, transportation costs became less important for siting decisions relative to other factors, such as the proximity of a well-trained administrative, technical, and clerical labor force, state and local tax policy, and the presence of recreational, cultural,
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From page 82... ...
The most profound challenge to locational analysis emerged with greater public recognition of the effects of siting decisions. Everyone cannot be equally accessible to desirable facilities, such as workplaces, bus stops, libraries, fire stations, and hospitals.
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From page 83... ...
More and more, the work of social scientists is employed by congressional research agencies such as the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Technology Assessment. And many basic researchers from time to time find themselves addressing quite specific problems with practical implications.
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From page 84... ...
This research led to the inference that children whose early life experiences were impoverished would be permanently handicapped in their cognitive development, and hence in their educational achievement, and also to the hypothesis that early intervention in the form of intellectually stimulating and supportive preschool experience-could give such children a head start in life that would permanently improve their intellectual performance and life chances. These ideas, developing at a time when the war on poverty was being fought through a variety of social and economic programs, led to the creation of Project Head Start, a national program of compensatory preschool education, and to a large number of similar locally based programs.
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From page 85... ...
In such circumstances social scientists are frequently asked to review the relevant research literature and provide informed judgments about the implications of existing findings for the policy under consideration. This task is difficult and delicate because the criteria for generalizing from such findings are stringent.
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From page 86... ...
By the 14th edition, published in 1929, the inherent mental inferiority of Negroes had come into question, although the comment about their standing on a lower evolutionary plane was retained. Carr-Sanders is quoted as concluding that "there seems to be no marked difference in innate intellectual power.
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From page 87... ...
In studies made to assess the effect of the examiner's race on the subject's scores, black children tended to earn higher scores when they were tested by black examiners than when they were tested by whites. Examiner effects should be controlled in seeking to discover possible racial differences in intelligence test scores; otherwise the results are likely to be misleading.
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From page 88... ...
Third, we can now monitor changes in both racial differences and racial attitudes, thanks to the development of statistical time series. We know, for example, both that the objective position of blacks relative to whites has improved substantially in the past 40 years, with a reduction but not complete elimination-of the gap in educational attainment, occupational achievement, and income (Farley, 1977)
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From page 89... ...
Social scientists need to label human activities, processes, or events so that they can bound and isolate their subject for study. The public, too, needs to be able to fix human affairs by labeling them in order to examine an issue from many sides and to consider it in detachment from its ongoing, often controversial, context.
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From page 90... ...
Over the past century social thinkers and social scientists have used a succession of terms for these societies savage, primitive, backward, nonliterate, preliterate, undeveloped, underdeveloped, less developed, developing, and finally, in a kind of desperation, simply new-only to find each term picking up connotations of inferiority. We have also had trouble referring to the very poor in society, seeking euphemisms like the hard-toreach and problem families, only to find these labels failing as well.
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From page 91... ...
, actually had a job or was seeking work for pay. Thus the working-age population could be divided into those with a job, those unemployed and seeking work, and those not in the labor force (retired, keeping house, going to school, institutionalized, etch.
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From page 92... ...
Research in the 1980s suggests there is a need to adjust economic and demographic statistical series again. Social scientists are now documenting the existence and apparent permanence of an informal economy and system of production.
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