Applications of Information Science to Social Measurement

In the 1960's, the growing influence of the computer caused dramatic changes to take place in the concept of scientific data and the character of data analysis. Among these changes was the onset of a shift away from single-purpose data collections and analyses based on relatively small data sets, toward large-scale data collections and analyses based on data banks serving multiple applications and possessing widely accessible storage and retrieval systems. In social science this led to the establishment of data archives and an early attempt to regulate their functions. Additional purposes were to keep these facilities abreast of a rapidly advancing technology, and enable them to remain au oourant with increasingly sophisticated management schemes for operating over larger and larger bodies of data (1). This paper briefly traces the role of the National Science Foundation (NSF) in these developments, discusses the current state of affairs with respect to social science data resources, and questions whether continued reliance on sheer data amassment is the true path to the further intellectual progress of the field.