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The article presents comments of the author on the article "Is Prediction Feasible in Social Work? An Inquiry Based Upon a Sociological Study of Parole Records," by Ernest W. Burgess. I am to discuss Burgess' paper with respect to its general methodology. A personal reference, which will disclose my standpoint of interest, will perhaps be pardoned. In a publication of 1914, I endeavored to find a basis for predicting the future political behavior of farmers and working men with respect to each other. For this purpose I developed certain indices based on the previously recorded votes of individuals of both classes in state legislatures.' In what I conceive to be their essentials, my method and that which Burgess has used in the paper of today are the same. We both have taken account of simple alternatives in behavior, an aye or no vote in one instance; conformity with parole or its violation in the other. In neither case, that is, has the behavior measured been regarded as variable. We both have employed the percentage of individuals in a general group who comply with one of the alternatives as a normal expectancy, or probability ratio by which to compare the corresponding behavior tendencies of subgroups, as expressed by similar percentages within the latter.

A brief discussion of Statistical Quality Control Charting procedures is first presented with special reference to the relevance of the objectives and assumptions. An approach to the design of discrete feedforward and feed. back control schemes, which are of great importance for example, in the chemical industry, is then given. This approach to control employs discrete stochastic and dynamic models discussed in Part I of this paper (Box and Jenkins, 1968) and has a close !ink with the forecasting problems discussed there. The control algorithms obtained are ideally suited to discrete digital computer control. However, for common simple situations the Algorithms may be represented by suitable charts or nomograms which may be employed to obtain improved manual control. The paper ends with a discussion of a problem typical of that arising in the parts manufacturing industry. Here, attention must be given to the cost of making an adjustment to the machine as well as to the cost of being off target and to the stochastic nature of the disturbance. An example is given where the appropriate form of action is like that required by Roberts's modification of a Shewhart chart. However, the justification required to make such action appropriate is very different from that previously given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A comparison of the final league tables of the 1971-72 football season, with forecasts made by Goal before the season began, shows significant positive correlation. This seems to indicate that football results am not pure chance (although them is obviously a considerable dement of chance). The paper questions how the data would have been handled by statisticians who do not approve of significance tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents comments of the author on the article "Is Prediction Feasible in Social Work? An Inquiry Based Upon a Sociological Study of Parole Records," by Ernest W. Burgess. The paper by Burgess will be discussed from three points of view,its general methodological significance, its specific statistical methods and its limitations for practical purposes. Heretofore behavior has been studied principally in relation to specific factors, each factor being treated as an entity in itself and considered apart from any other factor. The results of this method have been largely negative, for the studies have shown that, when other things are equal, the difference between criminals and non-criminals on any one item is comparatively small. The next step evidently was to devise a method by which these small differences could be massed so that their combined effect could be seen. The significance of Burgess' paper is that it takes this next step, providing a method by which the massing or accumulation of factors can be measured or demonstrated. At the same time he has included a larger number of items than had been included in any published report and has used the composite rate as a basis of prediction. He has invented a scientific tool of very great utility both in the explanation of behavior and the administration of agencies which attempt to control behavior.

An interest in the political strategy implications of the 1960 election polls led authors to collect a sample of forecasts from around the U.S. The project started quite innocently as a result of a penchant for clipping articles from the newspaper "New York Times." Once launched on clipping poll results authors also wrote a few letters to newspapers and research organizations to obtain clarification of the news reports or additional information. But the reader should be warned that, despite these efforts, this brief review of last fall's polls is somewhat capricious and unsystematic, as of September 1, 1961. In all, some data were obtained on 36 separate measurements of electoral preference or voting intention. Of these all except one were styled polls, straw votes, or opinion surveys. Of the other 35 measurements about which minimal information is available, 14 were conducted by newspapers, 12 by commercial or academic survey agencies, and 9 for Democratic or Republican campaign groups. The percentage errors for the polls ranged from to 16.8, with the average error being 2.9.

This article discusses the futurist movement in Russia. The futurist movement was led by people in art who scarcely understood politics and was sometimes also painted with the colours of anarchy. Alongside people of the future went those trying to look young, screening their aesthetic putrefaction with the left flag. Joining the futurist group were the first production-futurists and the constructivists. In order to propagate the ideas of the futurists by agitation, the paper "Art of the Commune" and a tour of factories and workshops were organised.

In a recent article [5] published in the Cahiers économiques de Bruxelles Professor J. Waelbroeck analyzed world trade flows in a very interesting way. He took total exports to and total imports from each region as given and applied the RAS method—originally constructed for input-output analysis—to analyze the extent to which flows known from an earlier table can account for flows in a later year. The approach has some resemblance to certain aspects of bivariate information theory. The present paper takes this theory as a starting point to provide an alternative method of analysis. The empirical part of the paper is based on the same data as those which are used by Waelbroeck. It turns out that the two methods yield virtually equivalent results, which is not really surprising, but which sheds an interesting light on the nature of the RAS method. Section II considers international transaction shares from the standpoint of information theory; section III considers some empirical results, and a third prediction method; section IV the RAS method; section V, the information inaccuracy of forecasts of import and export distributions for individual regions; and section VI traces the E.E.C. and Communist policy effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents comments of the author on the article "Is Prediction Feasible in Social Work? An Inquiry Based Upon a Sociological Study of Parole Records," by Ernest W. Burgess. Burgess' paper seems to me a valuable contribution. It may be regarded as a discussion of the central factor of scientific administration; that is to say, of supervision or control when that supervision ceases to be arbitrary, empirical and rule-of-thumb. While any one who does any work of any kind would naturally prefer to be the sole judge of the quality of that work, it is coming to be recognized that it is necessary to have any job appraised by other people than those who do it. If this work of appraisal by professional colleagues or by others in positions of responsibility is to be done on a rational basis, it is necessary to find standards of performance based on an analysis of past experience under the same or similar conditions. The question can then be asked, are the results actually secured by a particular worker better or worse than those previously secured, or secured elsewhere under similar conditions? Further, are the results of method A better than those of method B? In the field of business, great progress has beta made in recent years in determining and using such standards of performance where the output is tangible, made up of easily measured parts.

After a critical review of a number of published methods for short-term sales forecasting, two adaptive methods for seasonal sales forecasting have been developed. The conclusions reached are that for most industrial purposes short-term sales forecasting methods should contain as few parameters as possible, that Brown's one-parameter method is to be recommended for non-seasonal forecasting and that the two-parameter seasonal techniques developed in this paper offer improved seasonal forecasting methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A survey of a group of individuals with generally high education level was conducted to make predictions about a large number of future events. It aimed to investigate certain aspects of the use of expert opinion in policy making. The other areas of concern were the validity of expert predictions in areas germane to policy, improvement of such predictions and the appraisal of the reliability of a given opinion, beforehand. According to authors, it was found that confidence in prediction does not necessarily show a correlation with success in prediction and predictions made by groups of people are more likely to be right than predictions made by the same individuals working alone. Besides, the reliability of predictions also, can be appraised to some extent by examining the character of justifications given for them. Further, as mentioned in the article, many policy decisions require foreknowledge of events which cannot be forecast either by strict causal chains or by stable statistical regularities. For prediction of such events, the policy maker has no recourse but reliance on the judgment of experts.

The article focuses on last minute changes in voting intention and its effects on public opinion in Australia. Errors in prediction on the part of public opinion surveys are usually ascribed to faulty sampling, unexpected turnout of voters, or changes in voting intention between the date of interviewing and the date of election. This article suggests that in certain types of elections last-minute changes may present a serious problem for forecasters. The article describes the predictions and the steps taken to trace the cause of errors. Political set-up in Australia has been described. The Australian Gallup Poll accurately predicted the vote for the House of Representatives and one of the referendums. It had discrepancies, however, of plus 8.6 per cent and minus 4.6 per cent on the other two referendums. All four predictions were based on interviews with the one cross-section of 2,027 people, a week before polling day. Voting in Australia is compulsory, so an unusual turnout of voters could not have caused an error.

This paper attempts to place an explanation of the consequences of status inconsistency within the framework of dissonance theory. It integrates the Theory of Social Certitude, the Principle of Expectancy Congruence, and the Theory of Distributive Justice into the Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. The combined theory is evaluated in terms of its utility in explaining the empirical consequences of status inconsistency. A series of predictions are made regarding particular behavioral responses to specific inconsistency profiles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the health care system which can emerge as the largest area for social work. It is unlikely that by 1980 health services will become an integral part of a broader human services system. However, identification of social and technological trends and action according to the predicted impact will certainly move the health system in that direction. If the social work profession can get its own house in order, an enlarged role in future health care delivery systems is forecast. Health services are but one force to better the human condition. However, in the 1980s and beyond, innovations in health care and delivery patterns will be an ever more important factor in improving the general welfare of this country's population.

The article discusses the predictions made on providing financial support to social services in the 1980s. One prediction is that the funding of social services in the 1980s will be rationalized on a different basis from the one that originally prevailed.

The Iowa State University Statistical Laboratory developed a design for local prediction of the upset in the Iowa gubernatorial contest. This experiment was conducted as an investigation of the feasibility of introducing a high degree of accuracy coupled with a reasonably simplified procedure to the forecasting of statewide election results. In order to test the accuracy with which the two estimators would predict the final percentage of the vote received by each candidate, trial runs were carried out using returns from the 1960 Iowa gubernatorial election. On the basis of the performance of the two estimators in the two-year sample, 1960 and 1962, it is tentatively concluded that the combined ratio estimator provides a reasonably accurate method of election analysis and prediction for television reporting at the local level. Analysis of this information may suggest ways to simplify the present procedure and locate bellwether precincts suitable for opinion sampling by the pollster, as well as for purposes of TV analysis and forecasting.

Common to the concepts of balance, congruity, and dissonance is the notion that thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, and behavior tend to organize themselves in meaningful and sensible ways. In the respect, people who live in glass houses apparently do not throw stones, the concept of consistency underscores and presumes human rationality. It holds that behavior and attitudes are not only consistent to the objective observer, but that individuals try to appear consistent to themselves. It assumes that inconsistency is a noxious state setting up pressures to eliminate it or reduce it. The concepts of consistency are not novel. Nor are they indigenous to the study of attitudes, behavior, or personality. These concepts have appeared in various forms in almost all sciences. It has been argued by some that it is the existence of consistencies in the universe that made science possible, and by others that consistencies in the universe are a proof of divine power. There is, of course, a question of whether consistencies are real or mere products of ingenious abstraction and conceptualization. For it would be entirely possible to categorize natural phenomena in such a haphazard way that instead of order, unity, and consistency, one would see a picture of utter chaos. If one of the spatial dimensions were to be eliminated from the conception of the physical world, the known consistencies and the consistencies which allow human to make reliable predictions would be vastly depleted. The concept of consistency in man is, then, a special case of the concept of universal consistency. The fascination with this concept led some psychologists to rather extreme positions.

The article presents comments of the author on the article "Is Prediction Feasible in Social Work? An Inquiry Based Upon a Sociological Study of Parole Records," by Ernest W. Burgess. The author Burgess is to be commended for the painstaking manner in which he has approached the subject matter of his discussion. That one cannot fully concur in the method of his approach nor in his analysis does not detract from the value of his thesis. For it is only through serious study and discussion of crime problems, in all its manifestations, that a factual basis of approach will be achieved. Prediction, in relation to physical science is to my mind, altogether different from that which can possibly be hoped for in the field of social welfare work. In relation to all physical research one is dealing with fixed essentials. The basic elements never vary. What is required is to ascertain the components of the elements and to understand their adaptability. Having attained that basic knowledge, prediction with respect to their influences on the life of man becomes comparatively simple. But when one deals with the problems of social service, in all its aspects, he is confronted with human emotions that will not lend themselves to cold scientific analysis.

The article focuses on a study which was designed to test the hypothesis that publicists have strong needs to control their world and to be protected from its unfavorable reactions. The author found that his predictions about the personal needs of the publicist were generally supported by the data. This is a study of the need systems of journalists who are active in trying to influence their social worlds through the public press. One variety of newspaperman is studied, not from a particular interest in him, but because he provides people with an operational definition of a role of increasing importance, the role of the publicist. In 1930, Harold D. Lasswell, a Psychologist, published a series of essays called "Psychopathology and Politics." Lasswell's interest was to discover what developmental experiences are significant for the political traits and interests of agitators, administrators and theorists. Here and in his later work, "Power and Personality," Lasswell began to outline the need systems that would predispose individuals to unusual interests in influencing others and to particular methods of wielding that influence.

Political scientists and others have engaged in study and conjecture as to the factors which influence an individual legislator's vote, pressure groups, weighing of the facts, personal bias, log-rolling, evaluation of national interest, and many others. Some enlightening studies have been made, but they are far from definitive. There is, as yet, no accrete descriptive and analytical studies which give assured insight into legislator motivation. In this article a limited study of sources of factual information available to members of the U.S. Congress, and the attitude of members toward these sources, is reported. Twenty U.S. Senators and eighteen Congressmen were queried in the survey, by letters delivered in person to the legislator's offices. Responses were received from 14 Senators and 13 Congressmen. The written responses were supplemented by interviews with seven legislators and with nine senior staff members of Senators and Congressmen, with staff members of Congressional Committees, the Legislative Reference Service, Executive agencies and other sources of information for the legislator.

Social research has often been attacked on the grounds that the research itself so altered the original situations as to make accurate predictions impossible. In this article, the author deals particularly with the effects of published predictions and the adjustments necessary to account for reactions to those predictions. There has been a considerable amount of discussion, and some empirical investigation, of the possibility that the publication of an election prediction might influence voting behavior, and hence, among other effects, falsify the prediction. Practically, everyone might be more interested in the influence of an election prediction from the standpoint of its significance for the working of democratic government than from the standpoint of its significance for the methodology of social science. Nevertheless, the latter question, involving as it does such issues as the self-confirming and self-falsifying prophecies, pluralistic ignorance, and, indeed the entire possibility of public prediction in the social sciences, is of considerable importance in its own right.

The analysis of Guttman scales by means of scalogram boards suffers from two major limitations. First, the boards in use are expensive to build, mechanically awkward, and inefficient, and second, there are several important operations which it would be desirable to perform in the course of a scale analysis, but which cannot be performed within the framework of the Guttman notation. This article proposes a new notation which overcomes both of these limitations. It makes possible the utilization of a relatively simple and inexpensive board, and, at the same time, increases the flexibility of scalogram analysis. The method of linear-segments proposed in the article is primarily a notational departure from the Guttman technique of scalogram analysis. As such, it frees scalogram analysis from its notational shackles. It brings out a clear, simple, and general visual criterion for the scale structure, it simplifies the essential operations of scale analysis, and cuts down the labor involved in them. Finally, it makes possible the utilization of a simple and inexpensive board for scalogram analysis.

In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to both the use of symbols in the process of thinking, and to the problems that arise when symbols are combined into larger configurations or models - particularly when these models are then used as an aid in investigating or forecasting events that occur in the world outside the thinking system. One important use of such models is in describing the behavior of social organizations. This article begins with a very brief discussion of models in the abstract and a brief summary of some work published previously on the subject. Its next section considers some general functions of models and some yardsticks by which their performance may be evaluated. The following section discusses some differences between genuine and pseudo-models in the social sciences and some possible misuses of mathematical language in the social sciences. The last and longest section deals with some implications of communications models for the study of organizations.

There is a new consciousness in business today that its prosperity and even its survival depends on the feelings of many different people. In order to be successful in business, a public relations program must be adjusted to the group of people to whom it is directed. In a public relations effort, research plays a vital part in the determination and classification of the specific groups to which the program is directed. A public relations effort increases in effectiveness in proportion to the specificity with which it is directed to a group. The success of any business is determined in large measure by the cooperation which the company receives from its salesmen or dealers, by the manner in which its suppliers deal with it, and by the acceptance of its products on the part of actual and potential customers. Research can disclose not only the customers' or salesmen's opinions but establish the basis for a sound working policy with them. For research and public relations to work hand in hand, it is necessary that they share one fundamental belief that human behavior can be observed, measured and even predicted.

In any science, a summary of the current situation is useful. This article aims to restate the chief principles and techniques for improvement of prediction from polls to later mass behavior. Research which uses a demoscope as its chief instrument of observing, in common with all scientific research, may involve one or more of at least four levels of analysis. These levels include the qualitative, the quantitative, the relative, and the systemic. These four levels represent four degrees of increasing thoroughness of analysis from the superficial naming of things at the qualitative level to the profound, complete interrelating of them at the systemic level. To distinguish between these levels in practice and to work towards completer analysis, a suitable notation or symbolism is helpful in the social sciences just as it is in the more developed and exact sciences. The poller who wants to predict better will find that an exact notation, or more precise language, will increase the precision of his predictions.

This article presents a case study in the shaping of opinion among strategic public, aimed towards election polling forecasts and determining public images of social science. According to the author, the growth and development of science is in part dependent upon the climate of social opinion regarding its nature, past achievements and future prospects. The prevailing images of science go far to restrain or to accelerate the realization of scientific potentialities. The higher the social repute of the discipline, the more likely it is to recruit talents and to gain widespread support, and the greater, therefore, its later achievements. The public image of social sciences was approximately same as the prevailing images of physical science three centuries ago. There is little systematic evidence concerning the sources of the prevailing images of science, either in the seventeenth century or today. But among the greater part of the lay public, it would seem that the authority of physical science rests rather heavily on the technological achievements which it ultimately has made possible.

This article discusses some of the social and cultural factors which tend to sustain the validity of surveys, and also various other factors which tend to make people's opinions unreliable indices for predicting their behavior. Seven conditions which, if kept in mind, may assist in understanding the relationship between opinion and action are presented. This article is an attempt to apply the knowledge of behavior theory to the problem of validity of prediction from the public opinion survey. The problem of prediction from opinion to act is not a new problem in psychology. Indeed, mental life is apparently a mechanism for prediction. It is a forecasting device in which the experience units of the past are assembled to test the as yet unknown future. There are three social situations which bear on the validity of a verbal response made in a survey. The author calls them the origin, test, and criterion situations. The validity of a survey obviously entails a close match between the verbal response in the test and the terminal response in the criterion dilemma. The author presents some conditions which if kept in mind may assist in predicting the criterion action on the basis of the test opinion.

Two hypotheses regarding tolerance of the speech behavior of others are extracted from Stouffer's work. By interpreting the conditions of the hypotheses in terms of a contact and an expected rewards effect resulting from educational differences, and a perceived rewards effect resulting from occupational status differences, seven predictions are formulated. The seven predictions are compared to data from a relatively highly-educated, mobile, and predominantly southern female sample. The hypotheses find general support but there are several anomalies. These irregularities are examined in terms of possible implications for the hypotheses and tentative explanations are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the need for objective criteria in selecting foster homes has been stressed repeatedly in the literature, social workers continue to select foster homes on the basis of their subjective judgments. This article attempts to relate certain objective characteristics of foster parents and foster children to the success or failure of foster home placements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the usefulness of survey data on capital outlay plans and sales expectations in economic forecasting. It focuses on the analysis of the "Annual Survey of Business Anticipations of Plant and Equipment Expenditures" as a survey tool. It is concerned mainly with the time-series analysis of the data. Section II of the article is devoted to an analysis of the record of the anticipatory data as direct forecasts. Section III analyzes possible uses of the anticipatory data other than in direct forecasts. A section discussing the formulation of a simple model demonstrating the approach was presented.

The article discusses the significance of monetary surveys and monetary analysis in economic forecasting. The simplest type of economic analysis looks to the money supply for evidence on, and a measure of, inflationary of deflationary tendencies in the economy. While the analysis of fluctuations in the money supply can be useful in a first approximation when examining inflationary tendencies in a closed economy. Some of the data entering reserve money analysis are sometimes obtainable from the monetary surveys themselves, but the focus of attention is different.