Social Knowledge for Social Policy

Abstract

Lazarsfeld, as President of the American Sociological Association in 1962, called for annual convention papers on “The Uses of Sociology.” Lazarsfeld asked whether “the rapidly mounting stream of empirical studies and the increasing number of publications on social theory have contributed to anything the educated citizen would find worthwhile.” Among other things he asked specifically about unavoidable gaps between research findings and advice for action. After the convention he and the co-editors of the proceedings, Sewell and Wilensky wrote, “However far knowledge goes, there will always remain a gap which wiU have to be filled by additional assumptions and most of all by creative imagination which thinks of devices — institutional, technical and symbolic — to turn factual knowledge into operational procedures” [Lazarsfeld/Sewell/Wilensky, Introduction].