A collaboration with the Russell Sage Foundation and the American Sociological Society, this report assesses sociologists’ contributions to the field of corrections and the study of crime and examines how sociological training and theory can be carried over into practical professional application in the field. Topics include the organizational aspects of the prison system, social-psychological aspects of prison life, probation and parole, and correctional career opportunities for sociologists.

Lloyd E. Ohlin was director of the Center for Education and Research in Corrections, University of Chicago.

In 1949 the Russell Sage Foundation began a program for the improvement of the synthesis of research in the social sciences in professional practice. This book explores some of the major areas of interest shared by medicine and social science. Particular reference is made to those concepts and formulations that bear directly upon the problems of health and that may instigate collaborative research between medical and social scientists, linking disciplines such as sociology, social psychology, and social anthropology with medical research and practice to better clarify the function of the social and cultural dynamics at work in illness and human adaptation.

Leo W. Simmons was professor of sociology at Yale University. Harold G. Wolff was professor of medicine at Cornell University Medical College.

Readings in Evaluation Research serves both researchers and those teaching evaluation research, applied social research, and social planning by presenting a comprehensive overview on evaluative research. The general papers address such issues as the nature of the evaluation task, the role of evaluative research in programs of directed change, the organizational context in which evaluative research is conducted, and the appropriate methodological strategies. The case materials include treatment of problems in the establishment of the evaluative research role and reports of findings of completed research studies.

Contributors: A. Stephen Stephan, Edward A. Suchman, Michael Scriven, Michael P. Brooks, Albert Cherns, Herbert C. Schulberg, Frank Baker, Martin Trow, Peter H. Rossi, Chris Argyris, Anthony Downs, Hyman Rodman, Ralph Kolodny, Carol H. Weiss, Floyd Mann, Rensis Likert, B.G. Greenberg, John Mann, Charles R. Wright, Paul Lerman, Donald T. Campbell, Howard E. Freeman, Clarence C. Sherwood, Peter H. Rossi, James S. Coleman, Robert S. Weiss, Martin Rein, Francis G. Caro, F. Stuart Chapin, Walter B. Miller, Walter Grove, John E. Lubach, James K. Skipper Jr., Robert C. Leonard, Ronald Freedman, Laura Pan Lu, H.C. Chen, L.P. Chow, Victor Cicarelli, and John W. Evans.

Francis G. Caro was associate professor of social research in the Florence Heller School for Advanced Studies in Social Welfare at Brandeis University.

This 1965 report serves as a guide to the extensive research literature concerned with the prediction of student performance. In his analysis, David Lavin reviews and evaluates research covering more than three hundred sources on elementary and high school, college, and graduate schools. The book presents a discussion of the various criteria of academic performance and several methodological problems such as standardized predictor measures and interpreting relationships between predictors and performance. The findings cover four broad categories of performance determinants: intelligence and ability factors, personality characteristics, sociological determinants, and socio-psychological factors. Each of these categories is carefully scrutinized in terms of a number of theoretical and methodological issues. It indicates several areas for possible investigation and concludes with a plea for a broader context in which to evaluate performance and apply new knowledge.

David E. Lavin was assistant professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Most of the papers presented in this 1964 volume are an outgrowth of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society sponsored by the Russell Sage Foundation. The purpose of the seminar was to supply a focal point for discussion and research on the changing nature of military organization in the United States. The papers seek to probe the extent to which the military establishment and the military profession were adapting to the new requirements of international relations. Contributors: Albert D. Biderman, Maury D. Feld, Oscar Grusky, Kurt Lang, Moshe Lissak, Roger W. Little, John P. Lovell, Richard W. Seaton, William Simon, and Mayer N. Zald.

This book explores the idea that the attitudes and behavior characteristics of many who suffer impaired vision are socially acquired, not inherent in their physical condition. A part of this socialization occurs when the person who has vision trouble interacts with the seeing world in the encounters of everyday life. Another part of it occurs in organizations for the blind. This study is based on a major field research project sponsored by the New York Association for the Blind and the Russell Sage Foundation.

Robert A. Scott was professor of sociology at Princeton University.

This is a study of industrial organization, viewed in the light of moral and legal evolution. This  book explores a number of themes in the sociology of law, including: the relevance of legal theory to private non-state institutions, the nature of legality and its social foundations, incipient and inchoate law, legal cognition, and the relation between law and politics. These general topics are explored in regard to the extension of the rule of law to modern industrial employment.

Philip Selznick was professor of sociology and law at the University of California, Berkeley.

This book takes origin from Cornell’s program for research and training in culture and applied science, addressing the question of facilitating the introduction of modern agriculture, industry, and medicine to areas that are deficient in these technologies. Of central concern is the fact that technological innovations are apt to have consequences ranging from hostility toward the innovator to extensive disruption and crisis in the society. More generally, people resist changes that appear to threaten basic securities, that they do not understand, or that are forced on them. This casebook offers actual examples of efforts, both successful and unsuccessful, to bring about a change in some culture, with the desirability of using social science as an aid to technology.

Contributors: John Adair, Anacleto Apodaca, Wesley L. Bliss, Henry F. Dobyns, Allan R. Holmberg, Margaret Lantis, Alexander H. Leighton, Allister MacMillan, Morris Edward Opler, Tom Taketo Sasaki, Lauriston Sharp, Rudra Datt Singh, Edward H. Spicer, and John Useem.

Edward H. Spicer was professor of anthropology and sociology, University of Arizona.

An exploration of life in the military, particularly rank and file servicemembers, to better comprehend the relationship of the armed forces to American society. Moskos examines, among other things, the portrayals of soldiers in the media from World War II to the Vietnam War, the changing technological and bureaucratic characteristics of the social organization of the armed forces, and political attitudes, pay grades, and demographics of servicemembers, as well as race relations among enlisted men and behavior of combat soldiers in Vietnam.

Charles C. Moskos, Jr. was a professor at Northwestern University and a sociologist of the United States military.