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631 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 7 (2010)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0631 and id is 1 raw text is: INTRODUCTION Science Starts Not after Measurement, but with Measurement By KENNETH PREWITT Federal statistics should be viewed and treated as part of the nation's scientific infrastructure. The empirical social sciences dependent on those statistics produce social knowledge directly relevant to social problem analysis and policy formation. Statistics primarily come from the census and federal sample surveys, but increasing use is made of administrative and digital data. These two data sources have not benefited from the scientific attention given to survey data. Federal sta- tistical agencies, if given the resources and the author- ity, are the appropriate part of the federal government to insist on data quality, privacy protection, and data access for the scientific community. Keywords: new information order; digital data; administrative data; scientific infrastruc- ture; data access W e take for granted that official statistics are needed well beyond their immediate administrative and political uses by the state. In particular-and the justification for this volume of The Annals-note that the empirical social sciences, from which we get much of the social knowledge relevant to public policies, would not have reached current levels of maturity in the absence of public statistics. Demography requires vital statistics, economics relies on national accounts, political science uses voting data, sociology requires race/ethnicity statistics, and public health needs epidemiology. And, of course, excellent work on the history of the United States draws on statistical records. The social and historical sciences, like all other branches of science, do not start after measurement; they start with measurement. And the measurement of great significance to Kenneth Prewitt is the Carnegie Professor of Public Affairs and the vice president for Global Centers at Columbia University. He is a Harold D. Lasswell Fellow of the American Academy f Political and Social Science and was director of the U. S. Census Bureau during the 2000 decennial census. He is completing a book (provisionally) titled Sorting America's Races: Do We Still Want To? Do We Still Need To? DOI: 10.1177/0002716210372461 ANNALS, AAPSS, 631, September 2010

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