Scientific Worth Research Articles

Teachers’ Ratings of High-School Students on “Likability” and their Relation to Measures of Ability and Achievement

ONE OUTGROWTH of the quickened interest in education during the last five years has been the active serarch for better means of predicting school achievement. In this quest, personality variables are receiving extensive consideration by several investigators (2,4, 6, 7,11,12). Generally, these efforts have been rewarding either through discov ering a significant correlation between certain per sonality measures and level of achievement or by finding that some combination of personality and ability measures gives a higher correlation with the criterion than does ability test scores alone. Judging from the nature of the relationships so far disclosed between personality traits and achieve ment, one might expect that accurate prediction of achievement is not possible unless a fairly large number of personality test or factor (in addition to ability) scores are available for each student. If this is true, then the accumulation and analysis of test data necessary for prediction could conceivably be a forbidding task to many school systems. Un der such circumstances, a more concise means of personality assessment, if equally reliable and valid, would be welcomed. The study reported here represents an attempt by the authors to inves tigate some aspects of the scientific worth of one such method. In spite of the tang of antiquity and the often disappointing results associated with rating tech niques, this method was chosen for study. In a pre vious investigation (13), the senior author found psychiatric ratings of young adults on a personality variable to be fairly reliable under conditions where there was considerable breakdown and ex planation of the rating task. The rating of students by their teachers did not seem to present a prob lem of greater scientific magnitude. In fact, some advantage seemed to exist from the fact of long and close acquaintance usually found in the teacher student situation. To continue with this telescopic approach to personality measurement, it seemed necessary to choose a rather broad and familiar trait for rating. In addition to being a recognizable composite, it was equally desirable, for the ulterior purposes of this study, that the trait have something to recom mend it as a hypothetical influence on school achievement. While pondering these considerations, the trait of likability came to mind. The reality and positive influence of a trait similar to that of likability is not hard to docu ment in the experience of most people. A pleasing manner seems to contribute to one's effectiveness whether he be a salesman, minister, teacher, or politician. And, how many remember some fellow student from school days who seemed to please teachers to the point of getting a little extra con sideration, privilege-wise as well as grade-wise? The students who seemed to please teachers and make good grades in high school seemed also to continue to be successful in college. Were these students stupid? No?stupidity is seldom pleasing to anyone. Were they intelligent? Yes?at least average and, perhaps, above average in most cases. Are all intelligent students pleasing or likable to teachers? Certainly not.T Maybe in telligence (ability) and likability are bothfactors in school achievement, each supplementing the other. The present investigation, conceived as pre liminary to the larger task of methodological vali dation or prediction, was designed primarily to help answer the following questions: 1. To what extent are teachers' ratings of students on the trait of likability in agreement? 2. To what extent are these same ratings re lated to student ability and achievement?

A Methodological Analysis of Feminism in Relation to Marital Adjustment

I N THE confusion of the modern world, the liberal is often caught between two fires, assailed by both radical and conservative. Not a few political liberals see themselves as about to be crushed between the upper millstone of Fascism and the nether millstone of Communism. It is also true that in the narrower field of sociological research the middle way may be the hard way and the liberal in methodology may be attacked by both the quantitative and the nonquantitative research advocates. The purpose of this paper is to present a specific piece of middle-of-theroad research in its methodological setting. It is hoped that this procedure will aid in making clear the following thesis. With the opposition of the qualitative and quantitative methodological camps, there tends to be a dissociation of criteria of scientific worth. Given this dissociation, a readily classified piece of scientific work may be judged only according to the criteria stressed in one methodological universe. The middle-of-the-road study may be attacked as lacking the full assortment of virtues stressed by the statistician and also for absence of virtues revered by the nonquantitative researcher. Notwithstanding this attack on what, to both sides, savors of treason, the middle-of-the-road study might rate fairly high, if all criteria of scientific worth were fairly applied. The combining of a research report with a methodological essay may be justified on various grounds. To some critics, the research report may seem the cake and the methodological essay the frosting. For others, the analogy may be reversed. While dealing in analogies, one should not stop short of the suggestion that for more hostile critics it may all seem tripe. At least, there is an attempt at a balanced ration. It may further be noted that division of labor is often carried too far. Not infrequently, one sociologist passes judgment upon research methods but finds little time to do research. Another may plod through the drudgery of painstaking research which is not illuminated by detached methodological insight. Perhaps the humble research to be here reported may be regarded as an attempt to earn the right to a bit of speculation concerning sociological method. It was perhaps inevitable by virtue of some strain toward consistency that quantitative methods developed in the other natural sciences should slowly permeate the culture pattern of American sociology. Often, extreme claims were made in support of measurement as essential to any truly scientific procedure. Extremes generate extremes in cultural processes. Vested intellectual interests were supported in their opposition by others sincerely

Die menschlichen Rassen

THIS clearly written treatise on human races belongs to the polemical class of literature, being more concerned in rectifying the errors of German professors than in laying before its readers a scientific presentation of modern ethnology. Readers can best judge of its scientific worth by noting the classification applied to men of the European type. It is proposed to divide them into thirteen races: these are Nordic, Baltic, Alpine, Dinaric, Armenian, the “Faelisehen”, Turanians, Mediterraneans, Orientals, Indides, Ved-dahs, Ainos, Polynesians. Die menschlichen Rassen: eine populärwissenschaftliche Einführung in die Grundprobleme der Rassentheorie. Von Dr. Rudolf Lämmel. Pp. xv + 283 + 48 plates. (Zürich: Jean Christophe Verlag, 1936.) 7 francs.

Libraries and Gardening

A CATALOGUE of books on gardening, poultry and bees has recently been issued by the Leicester Municipal Libraries. Its contents are illuminating, and show that the gardening public is beginning to take an interest in the scientific aspects of their hobby, craft or vocation. Such volumes as Dr. Keen's “Physical Properties of the Soil”, Bourcart's “Insecticides, Fungicides and Weed-Killers”, Dr. Kenneth Smith's “Text Book of Agricultural Entomology” and many others of proved scientific worth show that the modern gardener is alive to the need of moving with the times. More than fifty volumes are included in the section on garden planning, and the kitchen gardener and floriculturist are amply supplied with books. The sections on poultry-keeping and bee-keeping are good, but do not give evidence of such scientific and artistic progress as characterises the volumes on gardening.

A Critical Analysis of the Dental Literature Dealing with the Effects of Dietary Variations Upon the Structure of Teeth

An analysis of the dental literature dealing with the observed effects of dietary variations and deficiencies upon the structure and composition of teeth, instituted to obtain a clearer conception of the work already accomplished and its quality, revealed much interesting data. Each paper was carefully read and then grouped as to its scientific worth. We have arranged the papers into three groups. In the first are placed those papers which on the basis of well controlled experiments derive certain well-founded and cautious conclusions. This group has been designated Group A. The second is made up of those articles which, containing excellent reviews and the correlation of research accomplished by workers whose papers fall in Group A, has been designated Group B. The third group includes those papers that do not present any or at most very poor experimental evidence for conclusions stated, which conclusions are based upon poorly defined information. This includes editorials, letters and essays, all of little scientific value. Also in group C, are included papers and reviews that are repetitions, by authors in a number of journals, of work already published elsewhere; and in addition, this last group includes a few clinical papers whose conclusions are not wholly warranted by the amount of evidence presented. The papers have been judged with this point in mind: Does the article contribute new, well-founded, cautiously interpreted facts, well supported by experimental evidence? In fig. 1, papers that measure

Annual Meeting of the Geographical Association

THE annual meeting of the Geographical Association was held at the London School of Economics on the first three days of January. The gathering was remarkable for an extraordinarily valuable series of papers of high scientific worth, for a broadcast message by Prof. J. L. Myers, the president, and for a continuation of the plan of inviting a distinguished continental thinker, in this case Dr. A. Sommerfelt, of Oslo, to speak.

XLIV. Concluding Address

In closing the present series of monthly meetings, I am able heartily to congratulate the Society upon the value of the papers submitted, and the genuine scientific worth of the proceedings. We have an honourable ambition that the Geological Society of Glasgow should take a fair place among the scientific associations of the kingdom; and such a position is within our reach, if the honest and faithful scientific labour of the past be continued in the future. A brief classification and summary of our varied proceedings may not be without interest. The advantage of geology, as a branch of general education, was powerfully urged by Mr Page.* We are far from undervaluing the study of the classics for the refinement of the taste and the discipline of the mind; but, at the same time, the great physical sciences cultivate accuracy of thought and intelligence of observation, and bestow upon their followers almost a new sense wherewith to receive the glory of the world. Geology may be called a gift of eye-sight, rendering the mind able to discern the marvellous history of the past, and the wonder of the present. With respect to the problems connected with the igneous and metamorphic rocks, the lecture by Dr. Machattie was of especial value. In investigating the formation of schistose rocks from ordinary sandstones, in two directions we received a lesson in the true spirit of philosophical research. Geologists are very apt to attribute the production of all phenomena to the one cause with This 250-word extract was created in the absence of an abstract