The Place of Research in the Long-Time Planning of a State Program for Public Welfare

Abstract

PROBABLY no other area of social action has undergone such rapid and profound change in the last decade as the field of public welfare. The overwhelming experiences of the depression years forced into the discard the traditional concept that the problem of public dependency is one of individual maladjustment; that some lack in the individual is responsible for his plight. Primary responsibility for the alleviation of dependency is now quite generally recognized to be society's rather than the individual's, and return to the laissez faire attitude toward the problems of poverty is unthinkable. Public welfare is gradually getting away from the old idea that grudging grant of relief, barely sufficient to keep the body alive, is all that the needy person has right to expect of society. Today our thinking tends in the direction of minimum physical and cultural requirements commensurate with our standards of human dignity. The increasing scope of public welfare, the realization that many of the problems thought at first to be of an emergency character must be considered as permanent, and the very magnitude of these problems, have greatly stimulated interest in defining their exact nature and inquiring into their causes. Research as mechanism for the finding and sifting of facts is becoming more and more recognized as necessary arm of public welfare administration. What precisely is research? Thorsten Sellin has described it as signifying a search, by means of approved and standardized scientific methods, for relevant knowledge which may form the basis for generalizations applicable beyond the particular problems investigated. Social research implies the use of scientific methods in the study of scientific data. It is perhaps well to draw distinction between social research in its broad general aspects and in its more restricted application to the field of social welfare. Social research encompasses the entire social-economic environment whereas research in social welfare covers only those social problems with which organized social welfare must deal. Re-