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388 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. ix (1970)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0388 and id is 1 raw text is: FOREWORD This is the third issue of THE ANNALS devoted to the discussion of social indi- cators and social reports. These volumes were the result of the willingness of Dr. Thorsten Sellin, now Editor Emeritus of THE ANNALS, to place this journal on the cutting edge of major governmental innovations. In March 1966, President Johnson instructed John Gardner, then Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, to undertake an interdepartmental mission to collect and develop a set of statistics and indicators that would be required for a presidential social report. In style and approach, the projected report would be analogous to, but in scope would go well beyond, the present Economic Reports. In order to support and spur on this governmental effort, Dr. Sellin asked Bertram M. Gross, the coeditor of this volume, to prepare a special issue of THE ANNALS as a private, trial-run social report. This one volume grew into two, which were published in May and September of 1967 under the title Social Goals and Indicators for American Society. These volumes were read and discussed at the highest levels of government, set off several heated academic debates, and were used in the preparation of Toward a Social Report,' the Johnson administra- tion's exploration of social reporting.2 Since the publication of these first volumes, the idea of social indicators and reports has been broadened and deepened. The Nixon administration has gone well beyond the exploration of social reports. It has committed itself to the issuance of annual presidential reports on social goals and indicators. A number of states, municipalities, and regional governmental units are presently exploring social reporting. Substantial private and governmental research grants have been allocated to the development of systems of social indicators and accounts. The idea of social reporting has been variously praised and damned in the academic world. In this regard, many of the articles in this volume were selected from a lively set of panel discussions on social indicators held at the 1969 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association. This volume is addressed to the thorny issues raised by these developments: What is to be the focus of a social report? What is to be included under the label social indicators? And how is this social knowledge to be linked to the process of policy-formulation? The resolution of these issues will determine whether the development of social indicators and reports will become a sterile academic ritual or a key focus of a contemporary social science of imagination and relevence. MICHAEL SPRINGER 1 U.S., Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (Washington, D.C.: Government Print- ing Office, 1969). 2 Because of the great demand for these volumes, arrangements have been made to have them published as a book, entitled Social Intelligence for America's Future (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, in press). ix

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