ACCENT ON METHOD
Boehm, Werner
Accent on Method THE AMERICAN SOLDIER: Adjustment During Army Life, by Samuel A. Stouffer, Edward A. Such-man, Leland C. De Vieney, Shirley A. Star, Robin M. Williams Jr. Princeton University...
...There is little new that has been added in these volumes and it appears that the confirmation of common sense, laudable as it may be for those interested in such an endeavor, does not warrant such an expenditure of time, money, and effort...
...7.50...
...There are other facts, elaborately arrived at by ingeniously devised techniques of polling and survey construction—for instance, those dealing with neurotic symptoms of soldiers in and after combat—which have been available in more meaningful and penetrating fashion for a long time, as the result of the work of psychiatrists, psychiatric social workers, and other clinicians...
...As a result, social science research turned away from a concern with problems to a concern with methods...
...II Social scientists have thought fallaciously (and many still think) that their own concern with human affairs can be best advanced by their adoption of the methods of the natural sciences...
...Princeton University Press...
...Reviewed by Werner Boehm HERE at last are the much heralded, long awaited results of "one of the largest social science research projects in history...
...The facts do not hang together...
...Perhaps this is due to the length, perhaps to the mass of detail, or perhaps to a more profound, inherent fault of this work...
...The two volumes, replete with statistics, tables, charts, and graphs, constitute the fruits of the labor of gathering and analyzing materials dealing with soldiers' adjustment to Army life (Volume 1) and their reactions to combat experiences (Volume 2...
...The purpose of this monumental study was to assist the Army in the formulation of policy, and the Army is to be commended for having "gone scientific" and for its willingness to use research as a means of polic making in the area of manpotip There is much information here, which will be of use not only to the Army administrator, but also to the student of society and to the chiician who is concerned with man's social and emotional problems...
...The present two volumes, which total 1,243 pages, are only half of the projected work...
...The question arises whether science consists of testing common sense or subjective observations or clinical experiences by "the scientific method," The answer must be emphatically in the negative...
...Stouffer has said that this work was essentially "an engineering operation," a means of supplying the Army with data for policy making, but he also wants to use a conceptual scheme, a framework, with which to organize the data...
...Still one comes away from wading through these volumes dissatisfied and discouraged...
...What these volumes do, then, is to hallow common sense by the sanction of scientific procedure...
...The effect of this misconception is clearly evident in these volumes...
...Most of what has been found as a result of elaborate and costly quantification procedures has been known all along to the interested observer or the participant in Army life...
...They constitute an impressive array of facts and not much more...
...Combat and Its Aftermath, by Samuel A. Stouffer, Arthur A. Lums-daine, Marion Harper Lumsdaine, Robin M. Williams, Jr., Brewster Smith, Irving L. Janis, Shirley A. Star, Leonard S. Cottrell, Jr...
...There are two reasons for this: one is that even in the use of the ^to-called objective methods such as statistics, the personal element in interpretation and analysis cannot be excluded...
...It is in the latter attempt that he has failed...
...Hence a method found useful with a given set of data, the nature of which was quite different from the data of the social scientists, became the method par excellence...
...Princeton University Press...
...He finds pertinent and meticulously verified data when he delves into the discussion of "Psychoneurotic Symptoms in the Army...
...There is much about the feelings of men toward each other and their officers which is simply obvious...
...they hang separately because conceptualization was severely limited and the execution of the research dictated, as has been suggested, by the use of IBM machines...
...They represent an analysis, by a group of sociologists and social psychologists, of data collected under the auspices of the Research Branch, Information and Education Division, U. S. Army...
...Stouffer makes this point repeatedly in this work...
...Such chapters as the ones on "Social Mobility in the Army," "Job Assignment and Job Satisfaction," "Attitudes Toward Leadership and Social Control," or on "Negro Soldiers," evoke even by their titles the interest of the student of man...
...And the reader is rewarded for his efforts when he consults the chapters on "Combat Motivations Among Ground Troops" and "Problems Related to the Control of Fear in Combat...
...It borders on the tragic to see so splendid an effort, so sincere a devotion, and so consummate a skill on the part of so many competent workers in the field of human relations practically come to naught because of their affliction with the curse of American social science, the exaggeration and misunderstanding of the empirical approach...
...The other reason is, at least in this reviewer's opinion, that the purpose of science is to increase understanding, to add to the "stock-pile of knowledge...
...7.50...
...The social scientist deified "the scientific method", made it a shibboleth and elevated it almost to a ritual, to the detriment of imagination, hypothication, originality, and creativity...
...Nevertheless, the disappointment persists, doubtless because little that is new is learned from these volumes...
...Ernie Pyle and Bill Mauldin have given us more insight into the soldier, his emotions, and his reactions to Army life A book written in the fifth decade of the 20th Century which is not concerned with this war in its historical context, which does not address itself to the moral question of the use of war as a means of policy, which fails to place its data within a conceptual framework which after all is available in many of the dynamic theories of human behavior—such a work cannot by any odds be called a great book...
Vol. 14 • April 1950 • No. 4
