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OCR for page 1
i, Production
The Committee on Basic Research in the Behavioral and Social Sciences
was formed in response to a request from the National Science Foundation
to the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council; that request
was for a report that would:
~ Specify appropriate criteria for assessing the value, significance, and
social utility of basic research in the social sciences;
· Identify illustrative areas of basic research in the social sciences that
have developed analytic frameworks of high social utility and describe the
development of these frameworks and their utilization;
· Identify illustrative areas of basic research in the social sciences that
are likely to be of high value, significance, and/or social utility in the near
future, review the current state of knowledge in these areas, and indicate
research efforts needed to bring these areas to their full potential; and
~ Serve as a model for social scientists in presenting the potential
implications and value of basic research in areas not included in the illustrations
in this report.
Although this formal charge refers to the social sciences, the committee
understands its responsibility to encompass what is usually included in the
behavioral and social sciences.
VALUE, SIGNIFICANCE, AND SOCIAL UTILITY
Central to the committee's charge is the phrase value, significance, and social
utility. Our task was to assess basic research in the behavioral and social
1
OCR for page 2
2 BEHAVIORAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH: PART I
sciences in light of these three criteria. We regard them not as mutually
exclusive but rather as overlapping and complementary; at the same time,
each is a distinctive prism through which the same set of research activities
or findings may appear different. By basic research in the behavioral and
social sciences, we mean research that has as its primary aim the understanding
and explanation of human behavior and social arrangements. Basic research
can be most simply defined as the discovery of new knowledge. As a result
of basic research, empirically verified descriptions and explanations of natural
phenomena and laws that govern their occurrence and interrelations are
systematically accumulated.
Value calls to mind intrinsic desirability and degree of excellence, although
its other connotations (such as a fair return and relative worth) may imply a
need to weigh quality against cost. Significance emphasizes importance in a
wider sense, as in research contributions that subsequently play an essential
part in other, perhaps originally unassociated, disciplines or applications.
Social utility points primarily in the direction of the well-being of individuals,
groups, and society as a whole. This report stresses that the full range of
utility extends well beyond both practical applications and public policies.
So described, the three tenets encompass a spectrum from the advancement
of narrowly defined research goals at one end to a ramifying potential for
individual and social betterment at the other.
Of the three terms, value probably can be defined least ambiguously. Value
represents a judgment about the research process itself the importance and
timeliness of the problem addressed, the soundness of methodological
innovations, the richness and reliability of data, and the superiority or
originality of the conceptual framework. These criteria of value are central
to judgments made by scientists in all fields. Academic appointments and
promotions, review of manuscripts for publication, and peer review of
proposals for research are all devices for implementing them. In each case
there is a central judgment about an individual's or a group's accomplishment
or about a problem around which further research can be organized: To what
extent has it contributed, or is it likely to contribute, to the enhancement of
scientific knowledge? Such a question presupposes as does the committee-
that the systematic pursuit of knowledge for its own sake is an essential
contribution to the betterment of the human condition.
Moving beyond the value criterion, the report addresses the other two
criteria by posing a second basic question: What are the contributions of
scientific knowledge beyond the normal boundaries of the discipline or
disciplines that created it? That available knowledge has always been brought
into service for wider, often directly practical ends is clear. With its aid,
ways are found to do things more efficiently, to create new goods and
.
OCR for page 3
Introduction
.
services, to inform decision making, and to improve the quality of life as
well as, of course, contribute to the advancement of knowledge in other
scientific disciplines through the diffusion of methods, instruments, and
theories. Knowledge about human behavior and institutions is not different
in these respects from other kinds of knowledge. On this as well as other
grounds, it is the committee's conviction that the behavioral and social
sciences must be judged by the same criteria as other sciences. In short, the
justification for basic research in all fields lies in the knowledge-generating
utility of scientific discoveries and in the well-founded anticipation-but not
guarantee that some of those discoveries will in the long run prove to be
of great practical benefit.
ORGANIZATION OF THE REPORT
The committee has approached its task in two ways. First, we commissioned
a set of papers to review various research areas or topics in the behavioral
and social sciences that have had great payoff or that show considerable
promise. In some instances the payoff has been in the form of discoveries
or inventions of practical value, while in others it has been in the form of
advancement in understanding of ourselves and our society. These papers
constitute Part II of a supplement to the committee's report (see Appendix
A for the contents of Part II). Second, the report itself suggests criteria for
assessing the value, significance, and social utility of basic research in the
behavioral and social sciences and illustrates these criteria with examples
drawn from recent research, including the topics reviewed in the papers.
The body of the report, comprising the committee's response to its charge,
is divided into four chapters. Chapter 2 considers the subject matter and
modes of research activity in the behavioral and social sciences. The chapter
first provides a general map of how the research terrain has been divided
among different disciplines and gives an account of the dynamics of the
process by which traditional lines of specialization and complementary
theoretical and methodological emphases have developed. It then goes on to
consider the varieties of theory and method that characterize the behavioral
and social sciences. Different sources of data are mentioned, as are the means
by which investigators typically analyze them.
Chapter 3 illustrates the progress of the behavioral and social sciences as
sciences, reviewing a number of areas in which significant advances in
knowledge have been made in recent years. One striking feature of these
advances is that frequently they have been borrowed from or have contributed
to other disciplines, often outside the behavioral and social sciences.
Sociologists who have inquired into the dynamics of social mobility and
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4 BEHAVIORAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH: PART I
status attainment, for example, have made liberal use of statistical methods
developed by geneticists and econometricians. Another example is the study
of human perception, which has involved a long-term interaction between
psychophysicists describing behavior and sensory physiologists describing
the physiological substrate of that behavior; this collaboration is documented
in the paper by Braida et al. (in Part Ill.
Chapter 4 describes a variety of applications of research findings to public
policy formation and social problem solving as well as more diffuse processes
by which knowledge from the behavioral and social sciences contributes to
society. Our illustrations range widely and include the reformulation of lay
understanding in areas such as racial differences; improvements in productivity
and individual well-being through human factors and organizational design;
and the invention of information-gathering technologies, such as survey
research, that have improved the ability of society to monitor the information
necessary for planning and governance in a complex democracy.
Chapter 5 sets forth in more general terms the committee's view of the
relationship between basic research and its influence and practical application.
We understand this relationship as a continuum, with influence running in
reciprocal directions and without hard-and-fast distinctions as to how problems
are perceived or how work is organized. We regard the process of application
as simultaneously technical, social, and political; as a result, considerable
lags occur between specialized advances in knowledge and their wider
employment. In addition, new and unexpected connections arise in the
process, and it is difficult if not impossible to estimate in advance the
influence or importance of a particular area of basic research.
This chapter also presents the conclusions of the committee. The most
fundamental of these is that basic research in the behavioral and social
sciences-like basic research in other disciplines should be regarded as a
long-term investment in social capital. The benefits to society of such an
investment are significant and lasting, although often not immediate or
obvious. A steep reduction in the investment may produce short-run savings,
but it would be likely to have damaging long-term consequences for the well-
being of the nation and its citizens.
RELATIONSHIP OF THIS REPORT TO PREVIOUS STUDIES
Many previous studies have dealt with various aspects of social research and
its uses. These include a number of general reports by broadly representative
committees of specialists as well as the voluminous writings of individuals.
We cannot provide a comprehensive listing of the very numerous and diverse
individual contributions on the subject, but the major committee reports
include:
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Introduction
5
· National Research Council (1968) The Behavioral Sciences and the
Federal Government (Young report).
· National Research Council and Social Science Research Council (1969)
The Behavioral and Social Sciences: Outlook and Needs (BASS report).
· National Science Board (1969) Knowledge Into Action: Improving the
Nation's Use of the Social Sciences (Brim report).
· National Research Council (1976) Social and Behavioral Science Pro
grams in the National Science Foundation (Simon report).
· National Research Council (Kiesler and Turner, eds., 1977) Fundamental
Research and the Process of Education.
· National Research Council (1978) The Federal Investment in Knowledge
of Social Problems.
These reports, while differing somewhat among themselves, also differ in
their concerns from the present one. Most of them rest on the premise that
the behavioral and social sciences can and should play a substantial part in
solving social problems. The Young report, for example, was primarily
concerned with ways to improve the use of social research by agencies of
the federal government in making policy. The BASS report includes a set of
individual volumes that assessed the status and needs of particular behavioral
and social sciences; its main report not only called for increased federal
support for the social and behavioral sciences but also made a number of
suggestions for improving the linkages among the various disciplines and
between the social science community and the government. This report also
proposed the creation of a set of social indicators corresponding to economic
indicators. As the title Knowledge Into Action indicates, the Brim report
spoke to many of these same concerns. The Simon report had a somewhat
more specific focus, calling for a reorganization of social and behavioral
science programs within the National Science Foundation, while on the whole
supporting the quality and effectiveness of these programs. The report on
fundamental research in education proposed a shift in federal support of
educational research toward more basic research. And the report on the
federal investment in knowledge of social problems had a still different
character, devoting considerable attention to the policy-making process and
stressing the limitations of social research as a tool for making social policy
or for operating social programs.
Many of the analyses and proposals in these studies still deserve serious
attention as guides for policy. None of them, however, was directly concerned
with assessing the value, significance, or social utility of basic research
indeed, none of them treated basic research in the behavioral and social
OCR for page 6
6 BEHAVIORAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH: PART I
sciences as problematic in this respect. Hence, the charge given to this
committee has led to a report with substantially different content and objectives
from previous efforts under similar auspices.
THE BEHAVIORAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
The behavioral and social sciences are those parts of a number of organized
academic and applied disciplines that have as a common objective the
explanation of the behavior and social relations of human beings by the
application of scientific methods.
As distinctive disciplines, the behavioral and social sciences are a devel-
opment of the late 19th century. During this period the first academic
departments were established, the first journals were published, and the first
professional societies in the disciplines of anthropology, economics, geog-
raphy, psychology, political science, and sociology were founded. These
fields still constitute the core of social science divisions in most colleges and
universities today, sometimes together with history, which is variously
regarded as a social science and as a humanistic discipline.
To equate the behavioral and social sciences with these named disciplines,
however, is imprecise for at least two reasons. First, like other scientific
disciplines, these fields are constantly subdividing and realigning as new
knowledge, techniques, and problems shift the focus of attention and suggest
the desirability of communication with colleagues from what were initially
other disciplines. For example, demography, the study of the size and
distribution of human populations, has emerged as a distinct discipline yet
still draws most of its students from among those who also identify themselves
as sociologists, economists, and biologists. A similar point can be made
about sociolinguistics, the study of the interpersonal and social determinants
and consequences of language use, a discipline that draws on anthropology,
psychology, sociology, and philosophy, as well as the field of linguistics,
itself a derivative of philology, and to some extent anthropology. The new
field of cognitive science, the study of human thinking, straddles areas of
psychology, biology, and computer science. And so on the list of such
examples is very long. Each field continually spawns new subspecialties as
its knowledge base increases. A list of some of the subspecialties of economics,
which have developed in addition to the major division of the field into
microeconomic theory and macroeconomic theory, illustrates this point:
mathematical economic theory, econometrics, the history of economic
thought, economic history, economic development, industrial organization,
agricultural economics, labor economics, public finance, international eco-
nomics, consumer economics, comparative economics, welfare economics,
OCR for page 7
Introduction
7
and regional economics (Rees, 1968:4.482-4.4841. Many of these specialties
also overlap with work in other disciplines.
Second, the social and behavioral sciences provide the research underpin-
nings for all or part of several applied fields. In medicine, psychosocial
factors are now strongly implicated in the etiology of some diseases and
disorders and in the efficacy of treatment (see the papers in Part II by Krantz
et al. on behavior and health and by Wilson on behavioral therapy). The
legal profession has increasingly engaged in and been influenced by social
science research on the impact of regulatory laws and agencies, laws against
pornography, the interaction between the incidence of crime and patterns of
arrest, trial, and punishment, and the behavior of judges and juries. Basic
research in the behavioral and social sciences provides much of the empirical
base for the practices and principles promulgated in schools of business,
education, urban planning, public health, international affairs, public admin-
istration, and social welfare. And research in these fields often contributes
to the stock of basic knowledge. Finally, many fields of study mathematics,
statistics, and computer science, for example have been stimulated by
research questions in the social and behavioral sciences to develop particularly
suitable models, methods, and techniques.
Despite the imperfect fit between established academic disciplines and
behavioral and social science activities as a whole, for the sake of convenience
we use these disciplinary labels as the basis for organizing a brief description
of the concerns and methods of the behavioral and social sciences. That is
the task of the next chapter.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
behavioral sciences
