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Sociology 65
survey was undertaken to contribute to discussions of immediate and pressing
social problems. But even then, one basic methodological question was not
overlooked, that is the problem of quantification in its broadest sense. Le Play
assessed the religious feelings of the families he studied by examining their
budgets and noting how much money they spent on candles for church masses.
It was objected that church attendance might be a better indicator of the religious
feelings Le Play sought to measure, and thus slowly the notion of time budgets
- in addition to money budgets - developed. It was then further argued, that
perhaps church attendance is indicative only of conformity to social customs; it
is the attitude toward religion which really matters. And so attitude measures
began their triumphant course.z
The second phase, which one might label the survey movement, began in the
United States around 1930. Because of political events in Europe during the
’30s and ’40s fewer and fewer studies came from European countries, and the
survey movement temporarily developed into a virtual American monopoly.
In principle, there is no limit to the variety of data relevant to thesociologist:
what people think, what they do, what they buy and own, with whom they
associate, all this and much more can be profitably studied in sociological
surveys. To deal with this broad range of problems, technical advances were
needed- and were forthcoming. The second phase of survey analysis was charac-
terized by significant developments in sampling techniques, attitude rneasure-
ment, and refined methods of questionnaire construction.
Largely as a result of such methodological progress, increasing numbers of
enthusiastic workers were attracted to the survey field. Because of the sheer bulk
of the work that was undertaken, and the exhilaration with which it was some-
times approached, the field gradually became rather chaotic. By the end of the
Second World War, the need for systematization was urgent indeed. Thus was
ushered in the thirdphase of survey analysis, which might be characterized as
that of codification. Among the most pressing questions that had to be faced
were first, the nature of the concepts with which the survey analyst is concerned,
and, second, given such concepts, determining how the relationships between
them can be rigorously analysed.
This phase of codification and its importance for general sociology is the
main topic of the present section. Before proceeding some terminological
clarification is needed.
The German sociologist Toennies once proposed dividing sociology into
three parts: social theory, applied sociology and sociography. He understood
social theory as essentially the creation of conceptual distinctions. His own
‘Gesellschaft zind Gemeinschaft’, or Parsons’ ‘pattern variables’, would be a
typical example. By application, he meant the use of such distinctions in the
analysis of social phenomena, as he himself discussed in the role of religion in
Cemeinsckaft and public opinion in Gesellschaft; Parsons’ analysis of the doctor-
patient relation in terms of the pattern variables would be another example. By
sociography he meant the detailed and systematic description of soma contem-
porary social situation.3
Two of these terms have undergone changes. Today, by applied sociology