The Issues of the Sixties: An Exploratory Study in the Dynamics of Public Opinion *

Of all the things that may be said about the years from 1960 to 1970, one that will provoke little argument is that they had their share of issues. Indeed, reviewing the various issues of those eleven years — Vietnam, civil rights, black militancy, crime, riots, campus unrest, the sex revolution, smoking and lung cancer, inflation, ecology, slums and poverty, women’s liberation—it is astounding that they all took so few years to happen.