ABSTRACT
A more fundamental attack on quantitative delinquency research comes from those, like Irwin Deutscher, who see no point in any study of the relations between variables. To the extent that delinquency research has failed, the critic reasons, something must be wrong with its assumptions, methods, or techniques. Delinquency research has been included, at least by implication, in two attacks on quantitative research in general. Pitirim A. Sorokin maintains that "the contemporary stage of the psycho-social sciences can be properly called the age of quantophrenia and numerology." C. Wright Mills argues that what he calls "abstracted empiricism" is helping to insure "that they do not learn too much about man and society." Along the same lines, Sophia Robison suggests that four sets of factors, the individual, the family, the subculture, and the environment must be considered simultaneously by the delinquency researcher.
