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373 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 1 (1967)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0373 and id is 1 raw text is: Some Dangers in Valid Social Measurement* By AMITAI ETZIONI and EDWARD W. LEHMAN ABSTRACT: This paper is a preliminary statement on the dysfunctions that social measurement may have for societal planning. Three problem areas associated with questions of internal validity are examined. The most general one is the area of fractional measurement, which concerns dysfunctions stemming from lack of coincidence between a social concept and its operational definition. Also examined are problems of indirect measurement and problems of formalistic-aggregative measurement of collective attributes. The area of indirect measurement concerns potential negative consequences of using data collected originally for other purposes as measures of social concepts. The area of formalistic-aggregative measure- ment concerns dysfunctions flowing from imprecise measure- ment of the states of social systems. Two broad classes of dysfunctions in these three areas are identified: (1) arriving at invalid conclusions which become the bases for erroneous policy decisions and (2) ignoring those dimensions and indicators of a concept that are most susceptible to social manipulation. Amitai Etzioni, Ph.D., New York City, is Professor of Sociology at Columbia Uni- versity. He is the author of A Comparative Analysis of Complex Organizations (1961), Political Unification (1965), Studies in Social Change (1966), and The Active Society (1968), among others. Edward W. Lehman, Ph.D., New York City, is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at New York University. For the past several years, he has been engaged in research on social and psychological factors in coronary heart disease within a large industrial organization. * Amitai Etzioni benefited in working on this article from Grant GS-1475 of the National Science Foutidation. The authors also wish to acknowledge the many useful comments made by Sarajane Heidt and Ethna Lehman in the preparation of this manuscript. Further dis- cussion of the theoretical issues involved will be found in Amitai Etzioni, The Active Society: A Theory of Societal and Political Processes (New York: Free Press, 1968). 1

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