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

The organization and financing of research 719
c. ‘The Full Opportunity and Social Accounting Act’ - introduced by Senator
Walter Mondale (Minnesota) with the co-sponsorship of IO senators.
Extensive public hearings have been held, many of the most eminent American
social scientists giving evidence. The establishment of the Committee on
Technology and Human Environment has already been authorized.
49. In April 1967 Representative Henry Reuss (Wisconsin), Chairman of the
Research and Technical Sub-Committee, Committee on Government Operations
(House of Representatives), realeased a four volume staff report entitled
The Use of Social Research in Federal Domestic Prograiiis,44 which examines the
following issues :
a. What is the scope and quality of social research now financed by the Federal
Government ?
b. Is the social research now undertaken useful - and is it in fact used?
c. Are waste and duplication avoided through administrative coordination and
prompt dissemination of research findings?
d. Is there adequate knowledge within Government of the limits and potentialities
of the social research resources which it can call upon in connection
with Federal domestic programmes?
In reviewing this report Albert Cherns, who was Secretary of the Heyworth
Committee on Social Studies in Britain, observes that few agencies could offer a
true evaluation of the use they had made of the research they had sponsored.
This he believes to be impossible unless a strategy for utilization is built into
the design of the research project iself.8 The Human Resources Research Office,
an Army Contract Center, managed by George Washington University, has
given leadership in this regard, having since its inception developed procedures
to ensure ntilization of its research on military training by the training commands
of the Army.’ Problems of evaluation are becoming a central research
theme.*
50. An inquiry leading to extensive recommendations has been that of the
Advisory Committee on Government Programs (Behavioral Sciences) of the
National Academy of Science/National Research Council whose report was
issued in September 1968.’ Created to give special attention to ‘sensitive areas’
in the international field its mandate was broadened to include the relations
between social sciences and government as a whole. The most discussed recommendation
is that ‘the President and the Congress create and independently
endow a National Institute for Advanced Research and PublicPolicy in Washington,
D.C.’. In some respects this concept resembles that of the Institute for
the Future.** The report proposes that each agency work out a long-range
social science strategy appropriate to its needs; equip itself with an adequate
* In Canada substantial provisions for evaluation by social scientists have been built
into the Federal-Provincial agreements for socio-economic development programmes
for backward areas.
** The argument for establishing institutes of this type is given in pages 102-107 of the
Report and may be compared with that given in VI, 10-18 of the present chapter
which distinguishes different basic types of research organization in relation to different
types of ‘output mix’.