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An extensive monitoring of the Jones and Laughlin (J&L) steel mill in Hennepin, Illinois suggests that absentee-owned corporations have the ability to involve themselves in local community affairs while maintaining an illusion of non-involvement. Three techniques J&L employed to exert influence are described: unilateral actions, cooptation, and intervention. The failure of reputational leadership data to identify corporate influentials is used to suggest both the success J&L had in concealing corporate influence and the inadequacy of the reputational technique for fully identifying power structures in verticalized communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

No research results are any better than the quality of the data. As scientists, survey researchers must share the problems of measuring, understanding, and controlling bias in their data. The potential sources of bias in survey research are many and varied. They may appear at any one or all of the several stages of the data gathering process. For example, they may occur in the selection of the sample, in the development of measuring instruments, in securing the responses of the persons in the sample, in the respondents replies, in the recording of the responses, and in processing the recorded responses. Even beyond the data collection process, bias may occur, as in the misapplication of statistics and in the interpretation of data. Progress has been made toward identifying and controlling sources of bias in some of these stages of the research process. Perhaps most progress has been made in the sampling stage and in the statistical application stage. Much advance has been made also in the reduction of error at the instrumentation stage. However, considerable work remains to be done on the problems of error control, especially biasing error, at all stages of the research between instrumentation and statistical analysis. This includes getting full response from the sample, accurate answers to the questions asked, and accurate recording and processing of responses. The accumulation of bias from these and other possible sources may be referred to as total or aggregate bias. The total bias may then be divided for analytical purposes into the following types: (1) sampling bias, (2) instrumentation bias, (3) non-response bias, (4) respondent bias, (5) interviewer bias, and (6) processing bias. This paper is an effort to deal with the problem of respondent bias in survey research. That respondent bias is a potent force in diminishing the validity and reliability of results from survey research is well recognized. The recognition of this condition has led to an enormous amount of activity aimed at isolating factors which determine this weakness of research results. These studies, by and large, have dealt with the problem of determining the direction of respondent bias, its magnitude, the speearle variables which produce respondent bias, and the effect of such bias on research results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of self has become a stimulus for a great deal of research in recent years. However, a theory is still lacking which adequately explains the processes by which changes in the self occur. Festinger's dissonance theory seems to offer a potential explanation of self-changes, although, in its present form, dissonance theory may be thought of as dealing primarily with changes in attitudes toward social objects other than the self. The basic assumptions of dissonance theory are that individuals tend to maintain an internal consistency among cognitions and that behavior tends to be consistent with existing cognitions. The literature is replete with evidence that these assumptions are met in the phenomenon of self-attitudes. Previous studies reveal a tendency for consistency among self-attitudes and a similar tendency for consistency between self-attitudes and relevant behavior. Therefore, on this level of reasoning, it may be concluded that the hypothesis of dissonance theory regarding changes in social attitudes may be applied to changes in self-attitudes. Furthermore, Bergin reports success in an empirical test of the application of Festinger's cognitive dissonance theory to self-attitudes in a study of the effects of dissonant communications upon changes in self-referring attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines changes in the socioeconomic characteristics of heads of households during the period of industrial development in the Midwest. Effect of in-migration and out-migration on the educational level of the population; Influence of industrial development on the income distribution of the heads of families.