ABSTRACT
REALISTIC social control, without the slightest doubt, depends upon measurement. But, what kind of measurement? It is at this point that social scientists confront their most difficult problem. There are some who are wholly impatient with the refinement of categories and with processes ; they wish to count whatever seems objective and simple. If only a sufficient quantity of facts may be gathered and correlated, these investigators appear to be, not merely pleased, but assured of the future utility of their work. Graduate schools, governmental departments, and business establishments continue to accumulate statistical enumerations of this simple variety, but the percentage which becomes actually usable for social control is lamentably small. Indeed, an accounting of the sums of money already spent and now being spent on quantitative researches which cannot possibly bear any practical relation to human affairs might take on the proportions of a public scandal. 1 In so far as the social sciences are concerned, there appear to be sufficient reasons for believing that the problem of measurement needs to be re-examined. The discipline of these sciences promises to produce, not thinkers and scholars, but skilled manipulators of mathematical formulae. Whether the final results of statistical devices are important or not seems to matter very little so long as these may be regarded as “statistically valid.” This claim for statistical validity has been pushed so far in the direction of absurdity that even the statisticians are beginning to profess misgivings.
