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

660 Stein Rokkan
Two technical developments proved crucial in accelerating these movements
toward greater boldness in tackling the problems of cross-national comparison :
first, the extraordinary improvements in machinery for the handling of huge
data masses and, secondly, the organization in more and more countries of
sample survey organizations gathering data on broader ranges of variables than
were normally covered in official statistical bookkeeping operations.
The development of the electronic computer has brought about a revolution
in comparative research. Tasks of calculation so far judged beyond the reach
of even the largest research institute can now be carried out quickly and at
moderate cost at a number of academic computer centres. The very existence
of these new machines has prompted a number of research organizations to
build up extensive data archives on punch-cards or on tape, and several of
these now cover data from large numbers of countries throughout the world.
The need for such data archives has proved most urgent in comparative studies
of economic growth, and an impressive number of attempts have been made in
recent years to apply complex techniques of computation to cross-national data
for a variety of indicators of resources, production, income, distribution, etc.36
The case for similar data archives has also been effectively demonstrated in a
study of world urbanization through the work of Kingsley Davis and his group
at the University of California at Berkeley,37 and more recently also in the study
of political modernization by Karl Deutsch and his associates at Yale and later
at Har~ard.3~
The sociologists and political scientists developing such plans have of neces-
sity been concerned with broader ranges of cross-national variables than the
demographers and the economists : they have not only assembled data from
censuses, national accounts, trade statistics, and other governmental book-
keeping operations, but have also tried to accumulate the best available es-
timates of variations in the spread of education and culture, in the sway of
religious, ideological and political movements, and in the exposure of the popu-
lation to the newer media of communication. UNESCO and such regional organi-
zations as the OECD are doing magnificent work on the evaluation of the com-
parative statistics of education, and in this field the sociologists and political
scientists attempting to build up data programmes can simply take over the
country-by-country estimates produced by these organizations. The situation is
less encouraging for mass media statistics: here UNESCO has been making valiant
efforts to accumulate information, but has had very little opportunity to carry
out detailed evaluations and analyses. On cultural, religious, and political
variables the international organizations can supply little or nothing: here the
social scientist is rather left to his own devices and must glean such data as
seem worthy of comparison from whatever national sources he can h d. Data
on religious memberships, electoral turnout, and party strength can be assem-
bled from official counts for a sizeable number of countries, but to evaluate and
interpret such data in any comparative analysis the social scientists will require
detailed knowledge of the working of each national system, and here the litera-
ture is often deficient.39 Data on levels of participation, whether cultural, reli-
gious or political, can only rarely be assembled from regular statistical sources.