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INDICATORS OF SOCIAL CHANGE:

DEVELOPMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA*

ROBERT PARKE

and

JAMES L. PETERSON

The median income of families in the United
States doubled and the country’s Gross National
Product more than doubled (in constant dollars)
between 1950 and 1970. Yet crime, drug use,
racial unrest, demonstrations and environmental
degradation prompted doubts in this period about
the easy equation of economic growth and social
progress, and there emerged a sense that economic
indicators did not suffice to measure progress, and
a renewed interest in social measurement more
broadly conceived. In the mid-603 this interest
was expressed in calls for the development of
%ocial indicators”, “social accounting”,
“measuring the quality of life”, “monitoring social
change”, and “social reporting” (Sheldon &
Moore, 1966), interest which was reflected in the
research and statistical activities of scholars,
research institutes, and governments in many
countries and in the work of international
organizations such as the United Nations and the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (UN. Secretariat, 1976).
The term “social indicators” became wide-
spread following the publication of the book of
that title edited by Raymond A. Bauer (1966).
Seeking to find ways to assess the social impacts of
the space program, Bauer brought together several
social scientists whose work came to be focused on
questions of social measurement and its use in
assessing the state of society relative to national
goals. Albert D. Biderman showed that pertinent
statistical indicators were available for only about
half of the goals identified by the President’s
Commission on National Goals (1960). Bertram
Gross, in a chapter on social systems accounting,
called for the development of comprehensive
models describing the structure and performance
of entire social systems. Such models might serve
to counter what Gross called the “new
Philistinism”, the tendency of hard measurements,
usually in dollars, to dominate equally important,
but softer, measurements.
At about the same time, the President’s
Commission on Technology, Automation, and
Economic Progress called for the development of a
system of social accounts (1966, pp. 96-97); and
Senator Mondale proposed a council of social
advisors and an annual social report from the
President to Congress.
Under the supervision of Assistant Secretary
William Gorham and his successor, Alice Rivlm,
the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare
produced Toward a Social Report (1969), an
influential statement of the need for social
indicators, written chiefly by Mancur Olson. The
report said, “We have measures of death and
illness, but not measures of physical vigor or
mental health. We have measures of the level and
distribution of income, but no measures of the
satisfaction that income brings” (p. xiv). The
volume defined social indicators as “in all cases . . .
direct measure(s) of welfare”, and contrasted them
with the more readily available measures of
government expenditures and other “inputs” of
various kinds (crime rates versus number of police
officers, for example) (p. 97). This distinction,
roughly that between outputs and inputs, has been
influential but controversial, because it is neither
exhaustive nor unambiguous. The output of one
social process may be the input to another. For

*The views expressed are not necessarily those of the Social Science Research Council or its Center for Coordination of
Research on Social Indicators. Preparation of this paper was supported by Grant No.G SOC 77-21686 from the
National Science Foundation.

235
236 ROBERT PARKE and JAMES L. PETERSON

example, knowledge and skills, outputs of the
educational process, may also be seen as inputs to
the production of goods and services. Further,
“direct measures of welfare” do not include many
of the variables central to an understanding
changes taking place in the society, such as
measures of population change. A broader
conception of social indicators was seen by many
to be more useful (Sheldon & Parke, 1975).
These early documents present diverse views of
what social indicators are or should be, but they
share common themes: concern for the develop-
ment of statistics measuring changes in social
conditions, emphasis on measures of noneconomic
dimensions of well-being, and commitment
social reporting - the dissemination of social
indicators to a broad public - and to the idea that
better social information will contribute
improved public policy. Our effort in this paper
will be to characterize recent work in the United
States on “macrosocial indicators”, by which we
mean the measurement of change at the national
rather than the community level or corporate
level, with a focus on more or less naturally
occurring changes rather than on planned changes,
program evaluation, and social experimentation.
The paper is organized into sections describing
current work on social measurement, social
accounting, and social reporting.* We turn first to
work on social measurement, which encompasses
activities ranging from systematic social
observation and collection of social statistics to
the development of theories and models within
which statistics take on more precise meanings as
indicators. Following that we consider social
accounting - the development of more or less
comprehensive schemes for classifying and order-
ing social data to assist in their interpretation.
Finally, we treat social reporting - the
dissemination of the results of measuring social
change.
SOCIAL MEASUREMENT
Careful attention to measurement and the
replication of measures are central emphases of a
tradition in American social science associated
with William F. Ogburn. As Research Director of
President Hoover’s Research Committee on Social
Trends, Ogburn supervised the preparation (and
himself wrote much) of the monumental Recent
Social Trends (President’s Research Committee,
1933). Under the leadership of several of his
of students, notably Otis Dudley Duncan (19693)
and Eleanor Bernert Sheldon (Sheldon & Moore,
1968), measurement concerns became central to
work on social indicators in the United States.
Duncan wrote:
what we must have, minimally, are quantitative
statements about social conditions and social processes,
repeatedly available through time, the reliability and
validity of which are competently assessed and meet
minimal standards. If such statements - “social
measurements” - can be organized into accounts _ . . so
to much the better. If some combination of measurements
or quantities derived from elementary magnitudes can be
shown to serve a clear interpretive purpose as
to “indicators”, so much the better. As accounting schemes,
models of social processes, and indicators are developed
and tested, our idea of what to measure will, of course,
change. But that does not alter the principle that the basic
ingredients are the measurements themselves. We are
talking about information, the processing of information,
and the reporting of processed information (quoted in
Sheldon, 1971, p.430).
In other words, a prerequisite to the advancement
of social indicators, however defined, is the
quantitative measurement of social change. Such
measures make possible empirical findings about
current social conditions and social processes -
including assessments of the “quality of life” and
individual well-being - and about changes in these
conditions and processes over time. These findings
in turn provide ingredients for the development of
models and theories of social change and societal
functioning.
Replication serves the dual purposes of
providing a means of testing the worth and validity
of measures, and allowing the measurement of
changes in conditions over time. Researchers in the
U.S. are paying increasing attention to measure-
ment problems and to the replication of measures.
In the following paragraphs we provide some
specific examples of this development.
Social mobility
The measurement of social mobility,
particularly occupational mobility between
generations, is among the most highly developed
areas of quantitative research on social change in
the United States (Blau & Duncan, 1967;

*The classification used here is adapted from that given by Duncan (1974): social bookkeeping; social accounting
social science; social forecasting; social reporting; and social advising.
 INDICATORS OF SOCIAL CHANGE: DEVELOPMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Featherman & Hauser, 1978). Research has
yielded well-documented and important con-
clusions about changes in occupational mobility
between generations of men in the United States
such as (Sewell, 1978):
Changes in national rates of occupational mobility, father
to son, have been due almost entirely to changes in the
distribution of men by occupation; there is no evidence of
a “‘hardening of the categories” in contemporary
American society.
Black fathers of high status are less able to transmit their
status to their sons than are high-status white fathers, but
there is clear evidence of recent improvement in the
ability of black fathers to transmit their status to their
sons.
Facts such as these permit the formation of
judgments about the progress of social equity in
the United States, and have been used for this
purpose in the press (Greider, 1979). There are, to
be sure, many questions remaining. Featherman
and Hauser note that although they have good
indicators of trends in occupational opportunities,
their studies do not yet provide explanations of
what they observe (1978, p. 16). It is nonetheless
clear that we have here a mature area of indicators
research, one adequate to support judgments
about changes in important features of the society,
and that might serve as a model for indicators
development in other areas.
Educational achievement
On 14 September 1979, the front page of the
Washington Post carried a banner headline reading
“Mathematics Ability of American Children
Declines”. The news, which also appeared at the
top of page 1 of the New York Times, was based
on newly released measures from nationwide
standardized achievement tests that are part of the
National Assessment of Educational Progress
(NAEP) (1975). While data characterizing school
systems (expenditures, class size, student- teacher
ratio, etc.) and data on enrollment and school
years completed have been available for many
years, uniform national data on how much
children were learning have become available
through the NAEP only since 1969 (Ferris, 1978;
National Center for Educational Statistics, 1979).
Although longer time series are available which
describe the learning of subgroups of the
population, such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test
(SAT), administered to college-bound youth, the
results of such tests are sensitive to the
composition of the population taking them. For
example, as fewer young people drop out of high
school and more attend college, the ability level of
231
the population taking the SAT has probably
changed; and this has presumably affected the test
scores. Hence the value of uniform testing of an
entire age group.
Recent data show improvements in reading
shills, mixed performance in writing, and declines
in student knowledge of constitutional rights, the
political process, and international affairs (NCES,
1979, p. 9). Awareness of these trends has
stimulated the analysis of this data base in a search
for explanations. Two analysts have drawn
attention to the fact that the declines in
performance have been concentrated among
children in the higher school grades, and have
suggested that the search for causes concentrate
especially on changes in the school curriculum and
declines in enrollments in academic courses
(Harnischfeger & Wiley, 1975, pp. 114- 120).
Victimization by crime
The major source of U.S. national statistics on
crime has for years been data on crimes reported
to the local police and reported by them to the
Federal Bureau of Investigation for publication in
Uniform Crime Reports. The shortcomings of this
system of reporting have long been known: much
crime goes unreported; there are variations in the
accuracy of the information reported; differences
in rates of arrest, conviction, etc. often reflect the
differences in police practices and resources more
than they do the incidence of crime; and those
collecting the data - the police departments -
have a stake in what the data show (Biderman,
1966, pp. 11 l- 129; Reiss & Biderman, 1967).
In response to these and similar considerations
the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration
of the U.S. Department of Justice initiated the
National Crime Survey. From interviews con-
ducted monthly in 10,000 households in the U.S.,
data are developed about residents’ experiences as
victims of crime (U.S. National Criminal Justice
Information and Statistics Service, issued
irregularly). Such data add greatly to knowledge of
the incidence of crime, its victims, and the
circumstances under which it takes place. For
example, we now know that the incidence of
crime is far more stable over time than is shown by
Uniform Crime Reports. Since data on crime are
collected in the survey so as to facilitate
comparison with data in the Uniform Crime
Reports, it is also possible to make judgments
about the relative completeness of reporting of
various types of crime.
238 ROBERT PARKE and JAMES L. PETERSON
Subjective well-being
The foregoing examples illustrate new measures
of changes in society, based on systematic
observation of objective conditions. Another sort
of research is based on the premise that “the
relationship between objective conditions and
psychological states is very imperfect and that in
order to know the quality of life experience, it will
be necessary to go directly to the individual
himself for his description of how his life feels to
him”. (Campbell et aZ., 1976, p. 4). Pioneering
work in this area has been done by Campbell &
Converse (1972), and by Andrews & Withey
(1974,1976).
ln a survey-based investigation of perceived
satisfaction, Campbell et al. (1976) have explored
the relationships between satisfaction in various
life domains (family, housing, job, etc.) and a
global (overall) measure of life satisfaction, and
between measures of satisfaction and measures of
objective life conditions. They emphasize measures
of satisfaction (rather than happiness) because
reported satisfaction seems to measure an
individual’s judgments rather than his feeling
states. The survey, designed to serve as a baseline
for trend studies, is now being replicated by
Converse and Campbell in an effort to find out
how subjective states respond to changes in the
social environment of the individual. Similar work
is being done in a series of Canadian surveys by the
Institute for Behavioral Research of York
University, Toronto (Atkinson, 1977) and in
comparative studies of well-being based on surveys
taken in various countries (Andrews & Inglehart,
1979). In the latter work Andrews and Inglehart
show the basic similarity in the structure of
responses to questions on life satisfaction in the
countries they studied, suggesting the feasibility of
comparative international research on subjective
quality of life.
Private and public measurement efforts
Advances in social measurement take place in
part through the development of new measures,
the improvement of existing ones, and the
cumulation of replicated measures over time to
build a time-series base. We have given several
examples of these developments, and further
The National Longitudinal Surveys of Labor Market Experience; the Quality of Working Life Surveys; the National
Longitudinal Surveys of the High School Class of 1972 (and its sequel); the Annual Housing Survey; the National Crime
Victimization Survey; the National Assessment of Educational Progress; the Health Interview Survey; and the Health
and Nutrition Examination Survey (Peterson, 1979).
examples could be cited. The General Social
Survey, conducted biennially by the National
Opinion Research Center of the University of
Chicago, makes available to all scholars data based
on answers to questions originally asked in surveys
extending back to the early 1950’s (Contemporary
Sociology, 1978). Plans have been made for
replication of the National Survey of Children
conducted in 1976 by the Foundation for Child
Development (Zill, 1980). Other recent replica-
tions have included the Survey of Occupational
Changes in a Generation (Featherman & Hauser,
1978), the replication of the surveys of tolerance
of dissent conducted by Stouffer in the early
1950’s (Nunn et al., 1978), surveys of job
satisfaction (Quinn et aZ., 1977; Biderman &
Drury, 1976), and the replication of a survey of
moral attitudes of youth conducted by the Lynds
in Muncie, Indiana, more than 50 yr ago (Caplow
& Bahr, 1979).
While private research (much of which is
supported by federal funds) is responsible for
much of the imaginative and creative work in
social measurement, the bulk of the repeated data
for the measurement of social change in the
United States is produced through continuing
censuses and surveys sponsored or conducted by
the federal government. Chief among these is the
Current Population Survey, which for over 30
years has provided monthly data on employment
and annual data on school enrollment, educational
attainment, family composition, income, and
migration. But there are many specialized surveys
on health, nutrition, education, employment,
working life, crime, and other topics.*
Impressive as these data collection efforts are,
they do not by themselves produce the indicators
that are needed. For this, we need improvement of
instrumentation, improvement of access to data,
and assessment of the value of the data as
measures of phenomena of interest.
Instrumentation, data access and analysis
Advances in instrumentation may be expected
from developmental work such as that on the
Survey of Income and Program Participation, an
extremely detailed survey through which the U.S.
Department of Health, Education, and Welfare
hopes to improve measures of family income,
 INDICATORS OF SOCIAL CHANGE: DEVELOPMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
especially from government transfer programs.
There are, in addition, the recommendations of
the National Commission on Employment and
Unemployment Statistics for improvements in
measures of labor force participation and employ-
ment (1979), the work on sources of error in
survey design and execution conducted by Bailar
and Lanphier under the sponsorship of the
American Statistical Association (Bailar &
Lanphier, 1978), and a forthcoming investigation
by a panel of the Committee on National Statistics
of the National Academy of Sciences, National
Research Council, which will, under Otis Dudley
Duncan’s chairmanship, look into the reliability
and interpretation of survey measurements of
subjective social phenomena (Turner & Krauss,
1978). Improvements in instrumentation include
methods for calibrating information obtained
under different measurement procedures and the
establishment of linkages between data sets
through the use of standardized background
variables (Van Dusen & Zill, 1975), overlapping
samples and statistical matching (Ruggles et al.,
1977) standardized data collection procedures,
and direct matching.
Survey data are increasingly being made
accessible for reanalysis through data archives
(such as the Interuniversity Consortium for
Political and Social Research and the Roper Public
Opinion Research Center), public use samples, and
directly from the investigators themselves. Some
significant advances in data access are the public
use samples now being made available of recent
censuses and government surveys, the construction
of public use samples from older censuses (Mason
et al., 1977) and services which have grown up to
facilitate the search for and utilization of data sets
(such as DUALabs). Even so, there is need for
greater cooperation between archives, standards
for documentation (Roistacher, 1979), standards
for retention priorities, and more systematic
methods of disseminating information about
available data sets (Hastings & Southwick, 1974).
Assessment of the value of data as measures
involves scrutiny of the behavior of measures over
time, the testing of measures in a variety of
situations, and the opportunity to compare their
performance with that of others. It is important to
know of any datum whether it is a consistent
performer or is subject to arbitrary shifts -
whether it is reliable. It is equally important to
learn whether a datum signifies what it appears to
signify - validity - by seeing how it was put
239
together, by comparing it with other measures of
the same concept, by examining the behavior of its
component parts, and by studying the circum-
stances in which it rises and falls. The studies in
measurement by Campbell et al. (1976) furnish a
model of the sort of analysis that is needed. A
more formal version of this idea is set forth by
Land, who requires that social statistics be placed
and interpreted in the context of theories and
models (Land, 1971).
The conditions for the development of social
indicators are probably most fully developed in
the field of occupational mobility measurement.
This field now has a rich data base with reasonably
standardized and tested measures replicated over
time, a group of scholars well versed in the
theoretical and measurement problems of the
subject and the analytical strategies necessary to
resolve them, and a shared paradigm of the status
attainment process that guides the work of many
investigators and provides models for the inter-
pretation of data.
SOCIAL ACCOUNTING
Social accounting has been a focus of interest
and of research in the United States at least since
the appearance of Bertram Gross’ essay, “Social
Systems Accounting”, in Bauer’s 1966 volwne
Social Indicators. Whereas work on social measure-
ment provides measures and descriptions of
particular social conditions and processes, work on
social accounting aims at some comprehensiveness;
indeed, Gross undertook to set forth “a general
model for an international system of national
social accounts” (Gross, 1966, p. 155)
encompassing all major social institutions,
functions and resources.
Expansion of the national economic accounts
Much of the early discussion of the need for
social indicators stressed the inadequacy of the
national economic accounts, especially the Gross
National Product (GNP), as measures of welfare.
Mancur Olson expressed the view of many when
he wrote of the national income accounts, “They
leave out most of the things that make life worth
living” (1969, p. 86). It is natural, therefore, that
there has been considerable interest in expanding
the national accounts to make them more
inclusive. Efforts have been made to incorporate
“externalities” into the GNP, to include the value
 240 ROBERT PARKE and JAMES L. PETERSON

of household production, and to make other
adjustments. Nordhaus & Tobin (1973) have
incorporated into the GNP such things as the costs
of pollution and the benefits of leisure, and the
Economic Council of Japan (1973) has sponsored
work on the measurement of Net National
Welfare. The accounts as now prepared neglect
both distributional considerations and
measurement of environmental assets and costs.
(National Bureau of Economic Research, 1977).
Accordingly, Eisner (1978) is working
estimates of income distribution using a “total
income” concept that includes capital gains and
losses and unconventional sources of capital
accumulation, such as educational expenditures. In
addition, Henry Peskin is working on estimates of
the distribution of the benefits of recent
environmental legislation (Gianessi & Peskin,
1978; Gianessi et al., 1977). Despite the highly
aggregative thrust of all this work, there appears to
be substantial agreement that “a single, generally
acceptable index of welfare cannot be con-
structed”. (Denison, 1971, p. 1; see also U.S.
DHEW, 1969, p. 99).
Time-based accounts
Courant & Juster (1979) sketch a concept of
social accounts which incorporates measures of the
expenditure of time. The economy as ordinarily
conceived produces outputs which serve as inputs
to households. In the Courant-Juster concept,
households (which are viewed as utility
maximizing firms) utilize these inputs, together
with time and both household and governmentally
supplied capital stocks, to produce household
outputs. These household outputs, in turn, are
converted into units of welfare, which are
subjectively defined but which, the authors claim,
can in many cases be measured. Their scheme
represents considerably more than an expansion of
the conventional economic accounts. Household
production is brought into the central part of the
framework; fuller treatment of the production and
use of capital is incorporated; and the concept of
capital is applied to household-held physical and
intangible capital and to environmental intangible
capital. Outputs (both household outputs and
welfare outputs) may be measured with metrics
appropriate to the units being measured, instead of
converting all measures to a money equivalent.
Drawing on research on time budgets (SzaIai,
1972; Robinson, 1977) and also on Roger Barker’s
work on “behavioral settings” (Barker &
Schoggen, 1973), Fox (1974) seeks to develop a
conceptual framework needed for a comprehensive
set of social accounts. Using assumptions and
methods from economics, he proposes a scheme
for expressing all of an individual’s resources (e.g.
skill, time, reputation) and rewards in common
the units. This leads to the concept of “total income”
and a scalar measure of “quality of life”.
on National goals accounting
A concern of some social indicators theorists is
the measurement and analysis of the achievement
of national goals. Work in this tradition takes the
form of national goals accounting - attempts to
give explicit definition to national goals and
priorities, to estimate progress toward the
achievement of these goals, and to measure the
cost of further achievement. Nestor E. Terleckyj,
whose work is the principal current exemplar of
this tradition, has developed a framework for
estimating the possibilities for planned improve-
ment in the quality of life in the United States
(Terleckyj, 1975). It includes (1) identification of
social concerns and of indicators to measure
conditions relevant to these concerns;
(2) projection of baseline trends in these condi-
tions and in resources potentially available for
altering them; (3) identification of the costs and
effects of policies that affect various social
conditions; and (4) calculation of the potential
social benefit of combinations of policies that
could be undertaken, given resource constraints.
Estimates of the possibilities for planned improve-
ments are to date highly tentative, in large measure
because of data limitations.
Following the publication of Terleckyj’s book
in 1975, a consortium was organized to pursue
related work. The consortium seeks to develop an
analytical approach and an information system
which could monitor and account for changes in
well-being of individuals or groups of individuals.
The project is organized around the concepts of
goals accounting outputs (measured by indicators
of the attainment of individual and social ends)
related by a series of input/output relationships to
resource inputs (goods and services produced in
the economy, and household time) (Terleckyj,
1978). The projection includes attention to
lifetime dimensions of changes in income, work
patterns, and other life cycle patterns (Moss,
1978).
 INDICATORS OF SOCIAL CHANGE: DEVELOPMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 241

Demographic accounts review and assessment. That assessment should

examine not only concrete design efforts in social
Demographic accounting is a different accounting, but also major generic questions in the
approach to social accounts, based on population development of social accounts. For example, a
stocks and flows. The groundwork for this major conceptual and theoretical issue is the
approach was laid by Richard Stone under United specification of the ways in which money, time,
Nations auspices (U.N. Department of Economic resources, and populations relate to each other in
and Social Affairs, 1975). Stone’s work represents the production of individual and societal welfare.
an application of input-output analysis to the Is it possible to develop a single metric of welfare
description of the processes by which people move as Fox suggests, or must different components be
into and out of the population. Demographic measured in their own natural units (whether
accounts are based on the principle that the money, length of time in a status, or some other
population in any status at the end of a period of measure) as is assumed in the work of Courant &
time (usually a year) equals the population at the Juster? Are such efforts at combination
beginning, plus births and migrants in, minus premature? It is clear that we need a better
deaths and migrants out. The scheme is both a way understanding of the ways and conditions under
of organizing data and an approach to analysis, which money, time, and people substitute for one
particularly in a life cycle framework. Stone another. These and related questions will be
(1971) has suggested that connections might be addressed in a workshop on social accounts being
developed between the demographic accounts and convened by the (U.S.) Social Science Research
the national economic accounts. Council in 1980. Finally, the interests of those
Land (1979) has sought to bridge the engaged in social measurement and those working
distinction between social indicators as discrete in social accounting have led to little joint work;
time series describing changes in social conditions attempts to establish links between these efforts
on the one hand and systems of demographic have been started and will be among the concerns
accounts on the other. He identifies social of the forthcoming conference.
indicators measures with the various states of the
“underlying” system of demographic accounts and
describes a mathematical model of population
flows between states for generating changes in the SOCIAL REPORTING
distribution of social indicators measures. Follow-
ing Matras (1973, pp. 141-49) he notes that data Fundamental to the notion of social indicators
on the distribution of population across various is the communication of findings to a public that
states described in social indicators (marital status, extends well beyond the group of specialists who
residence, occupation, etc.) can be interpreted as make social measurements and construct social
describing structures of opportunity for movement accounts. Hence a major focus of social indicators
among the various states identified in the model, activity is the production of reports of trends in
and that the transition matrices can describe social conditions.
changes in the opportunity structure for transi- Nothing currently published matches the
tions among social roles (pp. 44-45). breadth and quality of the reports of the
President’s Research Committee on Social Trends
(1933), possibly because no one of the stature of
The jkure of social accounting Ogburn has devoted such consistent effort to the
task of social reporting. However, a variety of
At the present time work on social accounts is worthwhile reports are appearing. In recent years
still much closer to the stage of frameworks and at least 29 nations have issued or have in
approaches than to the stage of findings. This is preparation statistical compilations which in some
not surprising, given the broad scope of topics sense are social indicators reports (U.N.
encompassed by social accounting efforts, and the Secretariat, 1976). Social Indicators, 1976 (U.S.
fact that key variables remain to be defined and Department of Commerce, 1977) and its
key relationships among variables remain to be predecessor volume, Social Indicators, 1973 (U.S.
demonstrated, and the lack of appropriate data. Office of Management and Budget, 1974) are the
However, enough work has been done to merit a American entries, and several more specialized
242 ROBERT PARKE and JAMES L. PETERSON

reports have also appeared.* These reports present
a great deal of data, from both published and
unpublished sources, in the form of charts and
tables. While most have minimal text, Science
Indicators, The Status of Children, and Social
Indicators of Equality for Minorities and Women
provide interpretive commentaries.
Social Indicators, 1976 (U.S. Department of
Commerce, 1977) (SI76), the government’s
comprehensive social indicators report relies
mainly on standard statistical products of the
federal government, but also draws extensively on
other types and sources of data. It includes a
broad range of statistical material concerning
social conditions and trends, including data on
“system performance” and public perceptions. It
provides brief discussions of problems of data
quality and Implications for interpretation of data,
although not the “detailed discussion of the error
structure associated with each of the indicators
reported” advocated by Fienberg & Goodman
(1974, p. 82). It is organized around a number of
different “major social areas”, which for the most
part reflect the policy concerns or functional
organization of the government.
While SI 76 gives the reader more guidance
than did its predecessor, Social Indicators, 1973, it
still does not go beyond general descriptions of
data characteristics and limitations to draw
specific conclusions about the trend evidence, to
explain why a series behaves as it does and how
this knowledge affects Interpretation, to highlight
important relationships among series, and to
suggest the consequences that may be attributed
to changes in a series. Such Interpretations were
provided in a separate publication, privately
prepared. (Taeuber, 1978).
The CivilRights Commission Report
A recent report of the United States
Commission on Civil Bights (1978) affords a more
satisfactory model for government social report-
ing. First, rather than rely on measures found in
existing publications and tabulations, the authors
designed new measures of equality better tailored
to Inform about the relative standing of women
and minorities in comparison with majority men.
Second, the report presents trend data for 1960 to
1976, for multiple indicators in each of the areas
of inequality which it examined - education,
occupation, income, and housing. Finally, the
Commission’s report devotes about half its space
to textual interpretation of the tables and graphs.
The report has a story to tell - which, while
determined by the data, is both developed and
qualified in the text.
The Civil Bights Commission’s report is not
without inadequacies, however. These are, first,
the presentation of data solely in terms of group
averages and the ratios of group averages. An
average for males of American Indian/Alaskan
Native ethnicity is presented for comparison with
an average for “majority” (i.e. white, non-
Hispanic) males. Never mind that the latter
population, magnitudes larger than the former,
encompasses subgroups no less deprived than the
minority that is offered for comparison. Never
mind that the population of, say, Chinese origin
encompasses non-English speaking children of
laundry employees and the children of college
professors. Nowhere does the report present
distributions which might qualify the impression
conveyed by its averages. Second, the report
contains no general definition of its main concept
- minorities - although it is quite scrupulous in
giving definitions for specific topics (age, income)
or particular groups (Chinese, Hispanic). The
selection of racial and ethnic groups treated as
minorities for purposes of the report is inevitably
political, reflecting past pressures for recognition
in the output of the federal statistical system and
the present constituencies of the Civil Bights
Commission. By failing to provide a definition of
the concept of minority, the report fails to
confront the difference between the concept that
was used and a scientific concept. For example, a
scientific delineation of the subject of the report
might measure life chances (for education, income,
housing, etc.) of groups defined by age, sex,
birthplace, nationality, ethnicity, color, language,

*The National Science Board produces a biennial volume, Science Indicators (1976); the U.S. Department of
Commerce, periodic report on Inhicutors of Housing and Neiphborhood Quality (1978); the-National Center for Health
Statistics. Health: United States (1978): the Administration for Children. Youth and Families, The Status of Children
(Snapper’& Ohms, 1977); the NationalCenter for Education Statistics, an-annual report on the Condition of kducution
(1979); and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Social Indicators of Equality for Minorities and Women (1978).
Commentaries on these reports have appeared in Elkana et al. (1978); Van Dusen (1974); Taeuber (1978); Ferriss
(1979).
 INDICATORS OF SOCIAL CHANGE: DEVELOPMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
education, income, etc. What we have instead is a
limited set of historically determined combina-
tions of social characteristics that is less than
optimal for a scientific understanding of the
dependence of life changes on particular social
characteristics.
Improving social reporting
Significant improvements in social reporting,
beyond these already in evidence, must depend
first of all on improvements in the indicators
measures themselves, and this will be accomplished
primarily by social scientists. Data needs must be
filled; however, at least as important is the
transformation of social data into social indicators
through analysis, modeling, and use of the data.
What is needed is “the scientific work that alone
can produce the infrastructure of consensual
meaning about particular series that makes their
presentation a selfevident necessity and their
behavior over time laden with meaning for other
related aspects of the society” (Converse, 1977).
Second, there must be further development of
social reporting aimed at overcoming the
inadequacies of the conventional format. First, the
tables and charts of the conventional format do
not communicate an understanding of social
change; there must be experimentation with ways
of communicating the results of social scientific
research on these matters to a broad audience.
Second, the overall organization of such volumes
may not be ideal. There should be further
experimentation with alternative forms of
organization - forms which reflect a social
scientific understanding of society rather than the
administrative organization of government, and
which link, rather than compartmentalize, social
areas. Reports might be organized around such
concepts and categories as major social
institutions, such as the family and legal systems;
societal norms and values; alienation and integra-
tion; and conflict, divisions, and consensus. The
(U.S.) Social Science Research Council is currently
seeking to foster experimentation in social
reporting through a program of commissioned
reports by individual scholars.
CONCLUSION
At the core of work on social Indicators is
careful measurement over time of the conditions
and processes of society, supported by the
243
development of surveys and instrumentation and
advances in data access, interpreted by social
analysis and the modeling of social change, and
expressed in social reporting. An increasing
amount of social science research is research on
social indicators. Replication of social surveys and
survey questions has become an accepted style of
scientific research, more investigators replicate
seriously (whereas casual approximations to
replication were once common), and the analysis
of time series and of measures of social change is
increasingly common in scientific research. More-
over, there is much research on social measure-
ment which is not presented as “indicators”
research (e.g. Gove et al., 1979); the scientific aims
of the social indicators movement are shared by
many social scientists who do not identify
themselves as doing Indicators work.
We conclude by directing attention to two
kinds of tasks. The first is the improvement of
measurement, through continued development,
replication, validation, and calibration of
measures. There is a long way to go before data
now in wide use have received the scrutiny
required for them to acquire the clear and settled
meanings implied by their use as indicators
(Duncan, 1972).
The second kind of task is directed to the
selection and institutionalization of indicators.
These are in part political processes (de Neufville,
1975). They are also processes to which social
scientists can contribute more than they yet have.
A fair amount of agreement exists on broad topics
for which measures are desirable, as expressed in
the publications of the OECD (OECD, 1973,
1976) and various national social reports (Zapf,
1975), but a scientific consensus has not been
expressed about which specific measures are
sound, which unsound, and what unmeasured
quantities have high priority. Theoretical advances
and advances in the modeling of social indicators
in various topical fields may provide guidance to
measurement in those fields, and advances in
schemes for social accounts may furnish guidance
to measurement priorities transcending particular
topics. Another source of direction for social
measurement may perhaps be found in efforts to
forecast social trends. Forecasting efforts seem
capable in principle of joining Interests in research
on social change with interests in the connection
of social indicators to social policy, and joining
interests in the measurement of individual
well-being with interests in societal conditions.
244 ROBERT PARKE and JAMES L. PETERSON

Forecasting thus can incorporate the major
emphases of the social indicators movement and
orient them toward an objective which is both
scientifically and socially useful. This path of
development is beset with dangers, which have
kept many of those who have fostered social
indicators from moving in this direction. Neverthe-
less, forecasting attempts, including their failures,
may provide a powerful incentive for the
refinement of theory, the sharpening of measures,
and the selection of measures having both societal
and scientific value. (Duncan, 1969a, Key&z,
1971).

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