Main trends of research in the social and human ... - unesdoc - Unesco

628 Pierre de Bie
a new awareness on the part of political leaders and administrators which is
manifested by a large investment in research.
The most salient and significant points in the development of this research
may be summarized as follows:8r
I. Problem-focused research is a relatively recent field of study. The problem-
focused research period follows one of pure, disinterested research, in the course
of which the phenomena of fertility aroused less attention than other phenomena.
The awareness of certain present and future problems has modified this first
view of the question on account of the discrepancy between population and
resources in some countries, and of the rate of growth of the population in
some specific areas and also on a worldwide scale;
2. An improved sense of organization, planning and prospecting may be
detected in the field of population growth, as well as an understanding of the
decisive measures which could be taken to reduce fertility;
3. From this development, the problems of fertility are taken up by new dis-
ciplines which succeed others though without supplanting them. After the
demographers and the economists, the sociologists and social psychologists put
forward new methodological theories and points of view: on the one hand is
the belief that attitudes may be influenced through scientific study and men
taught to control their environment and behaviour; on the other hand is an
interest in phenomena not at the macroscopic level - the level at which the
demographer and economist work - but at a microscopic level: the study of
primary groups, of attitudes and opinions, of the channels through which ideas
are spread, wherever it is possible to iniluence decisions, especially concerning
voluntary parenthood. This work is completed, moreover, by demographers and
economists throwing light on the social and economic corollaries of birthrate
trends at the macroscopic level and adding to their demographic predictions
data concerning the implications of these programmes for education and well-
being;
4. Here as in other fields of problem-focused research, a new branch is
growing up alongside a more theoretical and traditional discipline : family
planning research. Professor Donald Bogue, a demographer by training, sup-
ports this field of study, differentiating between this branch and demographic
research in general, and emphasizing its great possibilities: ‘the upsurge of
family planning action has created new research demands and avenues of
enquiry that previously had not been of great interest to demographers and
which previous demographic research could not satisfy’?z
The following point appears finally to be the most relevant here: if the results
of problem-focused research are carefully followed and supported, they can
be used at the level of pure research. Both at the macroscopic level and at the
microscopic level, dimensions and viewpoints appear which have never been
dealt with before.
At the macroscopic level, theanalysis of theefficacy of national familyplanning
programmes makes it possible to call upon political scientists, public administra-
tion theorists, economists studying the market and consumption, cultural
anthropologists and specialists in mass communication. At the microscopic