Social Stereotypes and Social Research

OURNAL OF SOCIAL ISSUES 4 OLUME 26, NUMBER 3, 1970

Social Stereotypes and Social Research

Elizabeth Herzog The Children’s Bureau

A main contribution of the report by the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (1 968) lay in a shift of emphasis. According to its message, it is the white majority rather than the Negro minority that needs to be studied and must learn to change, in order to make possible needed and desired changes for the Negro minority. Similarly, a salient moral emerging from the “war on poverty” is that the nonpoor need to be studied and to change, in order to make possible needed and desired changes for the poor, changes that will ultimately benefit the nonpoor also. The general subject of this 3 S I issue and the specific contribu- tions to it suggest an analogous though not strictly parallel devel- o ment in relation to social scientists and the poor: recognition

habits that weaken the effectiveness of social scientists in the war against poverty and the war against racial injustice-twin wars that are perhaps Siamese twins. The need for continuing review and reassessment is always present and seldom explicitly denied. However, at times it tends to be forgotten or implicitly rejected.

One of several similarities between the situation reflected in the present volume and the one delineated by the National Com- mission on Civil Disorders’ report is that modifications are being urged by members of the group within which change is advocated. Another is that the changes advocated do not represent modifications of avowed principles but rather ways of bringing the deed into closer conformity with the word.

o P a need to review and modify some research assumptions and

109

110 ELIZABETH HERZOG

The following comments grow from recurrent efforts to sum- marize relevant research on a given topic with a view to finding what we do and do not know about it-what generalizations do or do not stand up in the light of evidence concerning, for example, working mothers, unmarried parents, adoption outcomes, assumptions about “the poor, ” fatherless boys, prediction of juvenile delinquency. These reviews, on the one hand, have strength- ened a belief in the potential contribution of systematic social research to the solving of social-economic problems. On the other hand, they have brought home the danger that, without eternal vigilance, this contribution can be impaired, and the danger that eternal vigilance can give way before the multiple pressures im- pinging on social scientists with unprecedented force today- especially pressures for speed and volume of production and for clearcut, definitive answers to complex questions.

Among the potentials of social research is its ability to contribute to the making or the breaking of social stereotypes, an ability enhanced by what appears to be increased readiness-at least in some quarters-to consider research findings and incor- porate them into “poverty programs.” The presence of social scientists on federal task forces and advisory committees and in administrative or consultant positions within such programs is among the evidences of this increased readiness. It is therefore the more important that social scientists make conscious efforts to refrain from adding grist to the stereotype mill.

Slippery Half-?ruths Dictionary definitions of “stereotype” tend to emphasize

the word’s derivation from photography, its cliche quality, and its tacit denial of individual variation. In current usage it implies also a statement or assumption that is too simple, too widely accepted, and not wholly in accord with-or perhaps wholly counter to-available evidence.

The stereotype that flatly contradicts available evidence is the kind most easily combatted. The statement that most unmarried mothers are under twenty, for example, is simply untrue. The majority of unmarried mothers are over twenty (Herzog, 1967). More difficult to grapple with are the generalizations and assumptions that are partly true and partly false, or true within limits but misleading if viewed out of context, or true if adequately qualified but false if unqualified.

Do Fatherless Homes Cause Delinquency? An example of the more difficult variety is the familiar gen-

eralization that fatherless homes cause juvenile delinquency. It is almost certainly true that a larger proportion of boys from

SOCIAL STEREOTYPES AND SOCIAL RESEARCH 111

fatherless homes than from two-parent homes are apprehended delinquents. It may also be true (although this is less clearly es- tablished) that a somewhat larger proportion of fatherless boys commit offenses definable as juvenile delinquency than do boys from two-parent homes. But available evidence by no means demonstrates that father absence causes juvenile delinquency.

A recent review of relevant studies held two surprises: (1) the finding of significant association between father absence and juvenile delinquency was by no means as unanimous as is often assumed; (2) some of the more solid studies reached highly qualified conclusions about the meaning of their own figures.

Of 18 studies that met the criteria for review, 7 reported a significant association, 4 reported no significant association, and 7 presented conclusions too mixed or qualified to fall clearly on either side (Herzog & Sudia, 1968). Thus, although fewer found father absence unrelated to juvenile delinquency, the conclusions were as likely to be mixed or qualified as to be unequivocal. Such a count proves little except that a clear association is not to be taken for granted, but this is an important exception.

Bias in Commitment of Delinquents The mixed findings reported different answers for different

kinds of children, variously grouped according to ethnic back- ground, age, income, rural-urban residence, or type of offense. The qualified conclusions were responsive to evidence that boys from fatherless homes are more likely than others to be apprehended and, once apprehended, more likely to be committed (Welfare in Review, 1969; Cicourel, 1968). They are less likely to be put on probation or in foster placement. There are understand- able reasons why this should be so: the decisions of police officials are influenced by their judgment concerning the stability of the home to which offenders would be returned (Briar & Piliavin, 1964; Tappan, 1949; Sterne, 1964). Boys from low-income homes (Cicourel, 1968) and Negro boys (Axelrad, 1952) are more likely than others to be committed, and the proportion of broken homes is relatively high in these groups. Commitment often proves to be a road to recidivism, increasing the statistical count of boys from fatherless homes. Thus the documented facts introduce uncer- tainty about the relative frequency of delinquent behavior (as differentiated from apprehension and commitment) among boys from father-absent homes.

Delinquency and Familial Stress Another cogent basis for qualified conclusions is furnished by

studies that go beyond official statistics and attempt to assess


home climate and family relations. Such studies usually report that the primary association is not between father absence per se and juvenile delinquency. They indicate, rather, that the primary association is with family stress and discord, and lack of adequate supervision (Glueck & Glueck, 1962; Ferguson, 1952; McCord, McCord, & Verden, 1962; Robins, Jones, & Murphy, 1966; Rodman & Grams, 1967). Some investigators suggest that strife and tension preceding the father’s departure may contribute far more than his absence to a boy’s delinquent behavior (Glueck & Glueck, 1962; Rodman & Grams, 1967; Shaw & McKay, 1932). This interpretation is supported by Nye’s (1957) finding that boys in unhappy “intact ” homes report more delinquent behavior than boys in happy broken homes.

The well-known study by the Gluecks (1962) illustrates the ambiguous relation between father absence and reported juvenile delinquency. Although their prediction efforts have been sharply criticized, the study did provide careful analysis based on school, court, and social welfare records and on intensive interviews by social workers, with trained raters and high rater reliability. Among 41 home factors identified as significantly associated with juvenile delinquency, father absence was found in 61% of the delinquent sample as compared with 34% of the control group. However, 14 other factors that are also significant at the .01 level show a larger percentage difference between experimental and control groups, including “unsuitable discipline of boy by mother” (96% in the experimental and 34% in the control group) and “unsuitable supervision of boy by mother” (64% as compared with 13%). Some other items among the fourteen (e.g., paternal harshness, indifference, or hostility) serve as reminders that cer- tain kinds of present-father can promote delinquency, a point brought out also in other studies (Gardner & Goldman, 1945; McCord et al., 1962; Robins, 1966).

Subsequent analysis of the Glueck data by Maccoby (1958) underlined the importance of the mother’s role and especially the quality of her supervision. This emphasis was re-enforced by the fact that the New York Youth Board, in later efforts to test the Glueck method of predicting juvenile delinquency, eliminated items involving the father because there were so many broken homes in the low-income area involved and also because their raters concluded (Craig & Glick, 1963) that even a one- arent home could be “cohesive. ” Similarly, Leslie Wilkins in his iorstal studies eliminated father absence as a factor because it was not predictive (Wilkins, no date).

Thus the flat statement that fatherless homes cause juvenile delinquency cannot legitimately be made or denied without a


number of qualifications. It may or may not be true that fatherless boys are over-represented among those who engage in behavior defined as delinquent. However, evidence suggests that: (1) if they are, it is not specifically father absence which caused the delinquency, but rather the frequent precursors, concomitants, and consequences of father absence; (2) the presence of some fathers might be more conducive than their absence to delinquent behavior; (3) the difference in frequency, if it exists, is relatively minor and is dwarfed by other factors far more strongly associated with delinquency-including depressed income and community factors (Fleisher, 1966; Chein, 1967; Herzog & Sudia, in press).

In the absence of appropriate qualifications, scientific in- quiry suffers, but fatherless boys suffer more-from public attitudes, from the workings of the self-fulfilling prophecy, and from popular ideas about what would help the situation. For the rec- ord, it should be added that the juvenile delinquency rate among the predominantly father-absent children in the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program is described as ‘tfor below the national average [Burgess & Price, 1963, p. 184, italics original] .,’ Deceptive Models

The example just given is one of many in which complex and interacting factors defy a neat and simple statement. Real life is untidy. For research purposes it often must be reduced to a man- ageable number of dimensions and variables. Yet in a number of ways the reducing process may introduce distortion. This is especially likely to occur if the schematized model employed is at odds with its real life referent, as in the following examples. These examples, like some of the variables they involve, are not mutually exclusive, but overlap and interact to a degree inconvenient for research and for orderly presentation.

Dubious Dichotomies. The assumption of an either-or structure is often a way-station on the road to recognizirig a continuum or a trichotomy or an intermeshing of complex variables. The broken vs. intact home dichotomy is one that quickly breaks down under inspection (Herzog & Sudia, in press; Sprey, 1967). A whilom dichotomy that by now appears to be discredited is the physical-psychological contrast (Kinsey et al., 1953; Schorr, 1963). One that may have moved into the straw man category is the basic vs. applied research dichotomy that in its day fostered some unnecessary and probably deleterious stratifications of research and researchers (Sussman, 1964). The true-untrue dichotomy has already been referred to.

Another dichotomy that is ripe for retirement is the one that presents male dominance and female dominance as mutually


exclusive family conditions. As Bott has pointed out, and as Cohen and Hodges (1963) have pointed up, the father in a family is likely to be dominant in some areas and the mother in others, so that “to describe the working-class family as both ‘male- authoritarian’ (or ‘patriarchal’) and as ‘mother-centered’ is not paradoxical. They are, indeed, both, depending upon the func- tional area which one is attending to [Bott, 19571.’’

The male-female dominance dichotomy has contributed to oversimplification and distortion of the situation assumed to prevail in low-income Negro families, often referred to as “matri- archal.” Although the label is objectionable for other reasons, the present objection is to the assumption that family dominance is unitary and is exercised either by one parent or by the other. It violates the segmental nature of dominance within a family and it also ignores the varied valences attached to dominance within different areas. For a woman to be dominant in child-rearing and even in bread-winning does not necessarily make her dominant in male-female relations. Nor do most Negro males and females in poverty think she is so (Jeffers, 1967; Lewis, 1967; Liebow, 1967; Herzog, 1967). A related distortion which is also an example of spurious symmetry (discussed below) is the assumption that because a man is at a disadvantage with regard to jobs and income, a woman is at an advantage in these respects. Actually, despite assumptions to the contrary, unemployment is higher among Negro women than among Negro men, and women’s earn- ings average far lower than men’s among those who have jobs (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1966).

Another group that would probably be better off without the male-female dominance dichotomy are the children-of whatever class or color-who are asked to respond to questionnaire items on whether the father or the mother is boss in their homes, thus insuring at an early age built-in misperceptions about the either- or-ness of dominance, a discouragement of perceiving and valuing cooperative, complementary relationships, and a scrutiny of parental roles that singles out and highlights elements better digested as part of a general home configuration. This kind of comment is often met with a reminder that children already know a lot more than we can point out to them. However, what they sense may not carry the same force as what adults, by such questions, tell them should be measured, compared, and used as a basis for judging merit or competence.

Dubious Continua. Among the models that both reflect and contribute to dubious assumptions about “real life” is the forcing into a single continuum of two or more separate variables. This, for example, is the model employed by a number of scales in-


tended to measure masculinity-femininity (M-F). On these familiar instruments, a low-M score is regarded as equivalent to high-F, and vice versa. Boys who score high-F are reported as inadequately masculine and girls who score high-M are reported as inadequately feminine.

A good deal of justifiable criticism has been leveled against some of the specific items employed in such scales (Erikson, 1966; Pollak, 1967; Vincent, 1966). Aside from this consideration, however, there is reason to question the assumption of a single continuum with regard to masculinity and femininity. It has been found repeatedly that highly educated and high SES subjects are more, likely than the poorly educated and the low SES to present cross-sex similarities on conventional scales or tests of masculinity and femininity (Maccoby, 1966; Kagan, 1964). It seems probable that two continua would be more useful for assessing adequacy of sex identity, and that an individual’s score on one of these continua would not necessarily represent the reciprocal of his score on the other. It may also be that the optimum score would not be located at the extreme high end of either. (That each continuum would require a number of dimensions is yet another story, viz. Coffman, 1967.)

Similarly, it has been found that dependence and indepen- dence can be assessed more satisfactorily with two continua than with one (Rossi, 1968). A person may be high on both or low on both.

Questions about the basic model employed for assessing masculinity and femininity re-enforce a number of other questions about sweeping generalizations often heard concerning the “feminization” of boys who grow up in father-absent homes. Such questions cannot obviate the existence of systematic differences on M-F scales, but they do call for reconsideration of the meaning of such differences-a reconsideration desirable for a number of other reasons not relevant to the subject of dubious continua (Kohlberg, 1966; Kagan, 1964).

Spurious Symmetry. Research models frequently imply that zero is the mid-point in any dimension, and that corresponding plus or minus points are equidistant from it. Thus, if a present father contributes to adequate masculine identity, it is assumed that lack of a resident father to the same degree impairs development of adequate masculinity. If an unwed mother is not severely penal- ized, then it is assumed that a married mother who succeeds in sustaining a good marriage is not greatly envied and admired.

Merely to make explicit this pervasive assumption may be enough to raise doubts about it. It is explicitly denied in an old Yiddish proverb: “Money is not so good as lack of money is bad.”


Kadushin (1969) has paraphrased this proverb to the effect that lack of a father is not necessarily as bad as having a father can be good, a conclusion given some support by Kohlberg (1966). It has also been applied to the view of marriage that prevails among some very low income groups: Lack of marriage is not as bad as having a sound marriage is good (Herzog, 1962). A good deal of systematic though qualitative evidence documents the existence of such one-legged dimensions. And experience suggests that the assumption of a non-existent symmetry can contribute to stereotypes about the effects of fatherlessness and about attitudes toward illegitimacy among the very poor-especially very poor Negroes. Such stereotypes in turn are potent influences affecting public opinions about low-income Negroes, unmarried mothers, and families in AFDC programs. Public opinions in this instance include the opinions of legislators and program administrators.

Snapshot Perspective. A good deal of research depends on captive audiences, and captive audiences are often children. Among some sixty studies relating to father absence, only three employed samples of adults no longer in school. Generalizations about the long-term effects of father absence, accordingly, rest mainly on assessments of the characteristics of children, assessments usually made at a single point in time. Yet longitudinal studies of children in two-parent homes give strong evidence that predictions made in childhood often prove surprisingly unreliable (Bayley, 1965; Kagan & Moss, 1962; MacFarlane, 1963; Mussen, 1962). More- over, some investigators suspect that some significant differences between children in one-parent and two-parent families may represent developmental lag which is later made up (MacFarlane, 1963; Sears: 1951).

Mischel, for example, reports that father-absent children aged eight to nine displayed behavior interpreted to mean inabil- ity to delay gratification, but that father-absent children eleven to fourteen did not differ in this respect from father-present children (Mischel, 1958, 1961). One may question the interpretation in this particular study without doubting its evidence that one- shot studies in childhood are unreliable indicators of later characteristics.

Uncritical Variables and Single-Strand Fabrics. A familiar research sequence is that after many studies have resulted in public pointing with alarm to a culprit characteristic, it becomes clear that this was not in fact the critical variable, but that the deplored manifestations related to a complex of interacting variables, no one of which in itself dictated the outcome. This sequence oc- curred in relation to the question of mothers who work outside the home. Some years ago, an alarmed public and alarmed work-


ing mothers were responding to much publicized and little qualified research reports that if a mother works outside the home, her children are likely to become juvenile delinquents. The consensus of investigators today is that the impact on a child of his mother’s outside employment is mediated and determined by a complex of factors, including the mother’s attitude toward working or not working, the arrangements she makes for him while she works, the child’s perception of her employment and its reasons, the attitudes and behavior of other family members, the individual emotional and physical make-up of mother and child, the child’s age and sex, and some others (Herzog, 1960; Hoffman, 1960; Siege1 & Haas, 1963; Stolz, 1960). It became clear that efforts to assess the effects of maternal employment as a separate and discrete fact of life were like efforts to make a dress from a single thread rather than a fabric with breadth as well as length.

Similarly, the review of studies relating to father absence has led a number of reviewers to the conclusion that the impact of father absence on a child’s development is mediated and determined by a complex of interacting factors, including the reasons and extent of the absence, the climate of the home, the mother’s ability to supervise her children, her reaction to the father’s absence, her individual make-up and stamina, neighborhood norms and influences, the child’s make-up and temperament, the economic and social resources of the family (Herzog & Sudia, in press; Kadushin, 1967; Kohlberg, 1966).

The movement from focus on a single discrete variable to a cluster of interacting factors appears to be part of the natural history of research in many areas. It can represent also the movement from a stereotyped view of such an item as maternal employment or father absence to a more variegated and differentiated picture. Before the shift occurs, however, public feelings may be inflamed against those who possess the characteristic described as socially destructive and in favor of policies or programs based on dubious premises. For example, there have been some who hold that if divorce were more difficult to obtain there would be less juvenile delinquency, or that mothers should not be allowed to work-positions at odds with available evidence.

The movement from single variable to configuration is, of course, impeded by misinterpretation of the significance of statis- tically significant differences, a consideration more often articu- lated in theory than observed in pratice (Bakan, 1967; Chilman, 1966). The three related lapses most often encountered are: (a) highlighting differences but slurring over similarities; (b) ignoring the magnitude of the difference and its practical implications; (c) sliding into the implication that every member of a group under


study exhibits the trait shown to be significantly more frequent among its members than among some other group. This kind of flaw-misinterpreting statistical differences-is too familiar and too frequently discussed to require elaboration here. Yet it contributes a good deal more than its rightful share to the re- enforcing of popular stereotypes by social research.

Some Far-From-Simple Safeguards The kinds of misleading models briefly sketched above, and

others like them, tend to give way in time before the accumulated weight of evidence. However, they sometimes exact exorbitant toll before they yield-occasionally in the form of harmful or unfair stereotypes apparently buttressed by social research. Con- tinually revised approximations to “the truth” are probably an inevitable element in social research. Several other elements, however, are not inevitable: premature generalization, insufficient qualification, uncritical and unverified citation of findings, lack of replication. These all too familiar concomitants of the research explosion are among the deterrents to the maximum social contribution of social research.

One example will illustrate several of them. Tiller’s study of father absence is often cited as “proving” that fatherless boys become “feminized,” and has been used as a basis for conclusions relating to fatherless boys in urban American ghettos (Tiller, 1958, 1961; Lynn & Sawrey, 1959; Pettigrew, 1964). Such references virtually never mention that this study involved temporary, recurrent father absence for socially approved reasons; that it involved upper-middle class Norwegian boys in a puritanical rural setting; or that several studies of temporary father absence attribute problems more to the father’s return than to his absence.

The boys in the Norwegian study were eight to ten years old. A study of similar boys at an older age (fourteen to fifteen) did not support the finding of “feminization, ” although the investigator (by processes difficult to follow) deduced evidence of some other problems. Moreover, a careful replication of the first study, conducted in Italy, reported no significant differences between the father-absent and father-present boys with regard to “feminization” but did report one or two other differences in favor of the father-absent boys (Ancona, Cesa-Bianchi, & Bocquet, 1963).

If, as Ancona et al. suggest, the reason for the conflicting findings is the difference in cultural setting, then there is all the more question about applying the Norwegian findings without qualification to Harlem youth. A broader question, however, is raised by the readiness of social scientists to base generalizations and program recommendations on small unreplicated studies


investigating a few selected variables at a single point in childhood, and to cite the findings without the qualifications entered by the investigators. How the broader question can be dealt with remains to be seen, but the first step is to recognize that it exists and needs to be grappled with.

Cultivating Critical Review. Perhaps one safeguard would be the development of professional standards with regard to the points just mentioned, especially the need for replication and the critical reading of reports before, as Miller and Mishler (1964) put it, their summaries “enter without qualifications into the folklore of the discipline. ” Selvin’s observation (1 967) about sociologists applies equally to other social scientists: “A careful examination of the sociological literature shows that many of the most widely acclaimed works have large and demonstrable errors of interpretation. One reason for the prevalence of such errors is that sociologists do not learn to read critically-to compare the author’s facts with what he says about them.’’

Review of proposals by doctoral candidates and by appli- cants for research grants brings home the need for more critical reading. Not only do blatant errors of interpretation ride unseen, but introductory reviews of relevant literature show a propensity to pluck out the findings that support the hypothesis proposed for investigation and to neglect contrary indications in the same studies. The propensity is human and perhaps unconquerable (as the present author has suspected on the basis of introspection). It can be detected and perhaps corrected if someone other than the applicant has also read the literature. If uncorrected, it leads to a snowballing of folklore.

Failure to read critically is a problem, but so is failure to read at all. Informal surveys of reactions to three much-discussed reports revealed a surprising number of social scientists ready to express an opinion about their accuracy and their implications, but equally ready to admit that they had not read the report under discussion (Coleman et al., 1966; National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, 1968; U.S. Department of Labor, 1965; Miller, 1967). This may be one reason why qualifications spelled out by the investigator so often evaporate when someone else cites his work.

Avoiding the Procrustean Approach. Procrustes is known to legend for the practice of placing his victims on a bed and stretching or hacking them until they fit its iron frame-an approach which has some analogies in research practice. The Procrustean approach overlaps and buttresses a number of deceptive research models, but it has effects over and beyond them.

Campbell (1 964) has commented that “research conclusions


are at least partial captives of research methods.” Others have pointed out that conclusions can also be captives of the theories on which research is based. Neither the tendency nor its recognition is new, but neither has worn out or seems likely to do so in the foreseeable future. Ripple (1953) documented the extent to which research conclusions in the twenties and thirties reflected the theories prevailing in social work and changed in the wake of changing theories. Bordua (I 965) has suggested that conclusions about factors contributing to juvenile delinquency depend on the theory of causation espoused. If the hypothesis is that father absence in itself leads to delinquency, the general climate and functioning of the family tend to be ignored. If family climate and functioning are hypothesized as causal, environmental factors tend to be disregarded. If the cause is attributed to community factors, individual family processes tend to be left out. If delinquency is attributed to the opportunity structure prevailing in the society at large, other factors receive scant consideration. Thus, Toby (1 965) berates family-focused research for neglecting socioeconomic and community factors; an extensive review of research on juvenile delinquency (Empey, 1967) makes no mention of the broken home or the family; and a social-psychiatric commentary (Redl, 1966) takes both orientations to task for not recognizing each other’s domain.

A single-barreled theory unchecked by continuous evidence- oriented testing can be the enemy of accurate perception. A highly structured experiment can show whether previously identified factors are associated with a previously identified reaction. But it is less likely to reveal that some other factor or factors, not included in the research design, are more crucial and determinative than the ones under investigation.

Tightly structured experiments are useful for hypothesis testing. But exploratory, descriptive research is useful for modify- ing hypotheses and developing new ones, through illuminating the broader configuration within which identified variables act and interact. Such research today appears to occupy a low position on the academic totem pole, although it ranks high in the roster of research that has contributed to knowledge about human beings. The names of Freud and Piaget come to mind in this con- nection. In poverty research, more illumination about “the poor” has been gained by studies such as those of Hylan Lewis (1967) and Robert Coles (1965)-to name only two-than by immacu- late testing of a few theory-determined variables. Research into the problems of fatherless boys has been limited by the hypotheses it was set up to test, so that at times findings incompatible with the theory have been underplayed or ignored, and the results have


been fitted-as on the bed of Procrustes-to the thesis with which the investigator is preoccupied. If problems of behavior or adjustment are assessed only in relation to father presence or absence, the assessment will not reveal whether they are associated more strongly with precursors, concomitants, and consequents than with the absence itself. If the father’s return is not included in theoretical formulations, then studies of temporary father absence will afford no opportunity to inquire whether problems of children are attributable more to his return than to the separation.

If only color differences are included in theoretical formulations, then there is no opportunity to discover whether differences are attributable more to socioeconomic status than to color. For years this bias has contributed to stereotypes about births out of wedlock among low-income Negroes. When the comparison is based solely on color, the rate among Negroes has been estimated as almost eight times that among whites. Recently it has been estimated that the illegitimacy rate among the poor and near-poor is about eight times that among the affluent (Campbell, 1968). According to the Social Security Index, the proportion of Negroes who were poor or near-poor was twice that of whites, 41 % as compared with 19% in 1966 (Orshansky, 1968). If illegitimacy esti- mates were related to income as well as to color, the Negro-white difference would be drastically reduced. A number of other familiar and relevant factors-including differences in reporting, differences in readiness to marry because of pregnancy, differences in recourse to abortion-would modify the picture still further (Ventura, 1968; Herzog, 1962).

This is a crude illustration of the distortion produced when relevant factors are omitted. Yet a highly structured and sharply focused research design is often incapable of demonstrating that a relevant factor is missing. This kind of distortion occurs, for example, when research focuses only on the problems of poor families and ne lects to inquire into their strengths (Coles, 1965; Riessman, 19645.

A healthier respect for exploratory and descriptive research and its elevation to equal status with hypothesis-testing could help to right the balance. The ideal research balance would include constant interplay between the testing of hypotheses and the opportunity to evolve new ones, as well as to correct some distor- tions inherent in deceptive research models.

It is a good many years since Allport reminded his colleagues that the “nomotheticYy and “idiographic” approaches are complementary and that both are necessary to social research (All- port, 1942). Perhaps he needs to be re-read annually, especially by the gatekeepers to research expertise and resources.


The ideal research balance would include also constant cross- fertilization between disciplines. If research findings are to serve as a basis for further testing and development of hypotheses, the time for relating them to findings from other fields may perhaps be postponed temporarily. But if research findings are to serve as guides for poverty programs, the results of any one approach must be fitted into a whole that embraces varied approaches and frames of reference-a whole that includes information digested not only from a wide array of studies but also from a number of disciplines. Alvin Schorr (1963) has forcefully pointed out the relevance for poverty programs of findings relating to nutrition, housing, and medicine as well as the various social sciences.

If the Procrustean approach is allowed to bias social scientists' recommendations for poverty programs, the poor will suffer -or at least will not profit as much as they should from the efforts of the many social scientists committed to helping win the war against poverty. We cannot afford to wait until all the answers are in. But neither can we afford to publicize prematurely answers based on fragmentary findings inadequately analyzed-answers that in effect we do not really have. Nor can we afford to ignore the answers that others have, or think they have, and fail to draw on them to check or to complement our own conclusions.

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Documents

Social Stereotypes and Social Research