| Summary: | "The present text aims (1) to provide background materials on the development, nature, and scope of social surveys and research; (2) to indicate the complex variety of sources of data and to provide a basis for the cultivation of the habit of distinguishing between the more and the less reliable scientific sources of information; (3) to provide at least a minimum of instruction in the use of indispensable scientific tools and methods which may serve as a starting point in social exploration; and (4) to indicate the highly interrelated nature and the intricate complexity of social life, social processes, and problems which must be considered when one undertakes to study such phenomena as a culture group, a social institution, a community, or a social problem. This text also aims to avoid sterile abstract discussion of methods and techniques. Indeed, it attempts to show the relation of the processes and methods of fact-finding to human purposes and social values. It is hoped that the generous use of illustrative materials will give the student a lively sense of actual field-work situations and serve as examples of acceptable field-work practice. Scientific Social Surveys and Research lends itself best to a two-semester course in which the student can combine field, classroom, and laboratory work (chiefly in the development of schedules, questionnaires, or sociometric scales--should such be used in his study--or in the preparation of statistical tables, charts, graphs, maps, and so on). In those colleges and universities where only one semester is devoted to a course on social surveys and research, much of the laboratory work may of necessity have to be omitted, and the student may have to choose a field project narrower in scope"--
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