From Description to Research

Abstract

to earn their budgetary allowance. In addition, there was almost constant uncertainty as to how long it would be before some man in a key position would leave for a regular job or the whole project be suspended or terminated by changes in the relief situation. 4. One of the principal weaknesses of the statistical projects (and one they share with many surveys undertaken by public and private agencies with no relation to relief) has been the difficulty of disseminating the findings and of putting them to use. Funds for publication have seldom been available. The staff of workers usually disbands as soon as the project is completed. There is often no continuing organization equipped to follow up the survey. In most cities there are great opportunities to preserve and assemble the results of several surveys and to exploit them both for further research and for the public welfare. Municipal research and planning agencies and the universities are expressing interest in these possibilities. Numerous and varied contributions are being made by work relief projects to social statistics. Great masses of data of varying quality are being assembled and made available for analysis and interpretation. People are becoming accustomed to social and economic surveying. Administrators and officials are seeing opportunities to use statistical information in planning and routine administrative practice. Experiments are being made in the procedure of securing and analyzing statistical data. Finally, these projects tend to maintain the morale and welfare of the group from which will be drawn many of the workers needed by any great future expansion of social statistics in other than mergency agencies.