Reference Group: A Case Study in Conceptual Diffusion

Abstract

THEORY in the physical sciences has been built about attempts to reconcile diverse empirical findings through parsimonious explanations. Appropriate to its neophyte scientific development, current sociological theory mainly represents efforts at formulating basic building blocks of concepts or typologies with which social phenomena may be studied. It is questionable what order and progress in research and theoretical formulations would have arisen in chemistry if a number of gaseous materials that seem like oxygen were called oxygen. Yet, as they become general currency in the sociological literature, concepts tend to become loose-fitting about the empirical phenomena to which they are applied, seemingly appropriate to most but hardly distinguishing any. The effort of this paper is to document how reference group has become such a concept of diffuse empirical meanings. To this end, the kinds of data to which the term was applied were inventoried,' rather than the definitions given it.2 By considering what kinds of data were given its name, we inferred what kinds of criteria were used to determine its existence. It is around empirical findings in the name of concepts that we believe sociological theory may