of the Survey Research Center is concerned with the dynamics of the major economic decisions made by consumers and businessmen. This program, under the direction of Professor George Katona (Ph.D. Göttingen '21), was undertaken in the belief that people's motives, levels of information, attitudes, and expectations influence their economic behavior, and that measures of attitudinal variables obtained in interviews with a sample of consumers or businessmen can provide important information relevant to past as well as to forthcoming trends in the economy. Data traditionally regarded as economic — incomes, profit, assets, debt, prices — can thus be supplemented by quantitative information on psychological and sociological factors. The major economic surveys of the Center are an annual series of studies known as the surveys of consumer finances, conducted for the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. The ninth of these annual surveys is currently in progress. Further surveys have been carried out concerning specific economic decisions on purchases of houses, life insurance, savings bonds, stocks, and consumer goods both durable and nondurable. A series of studies made in 1951, 1952, and 1953 was concerned with attitudes toward inflation, spending, and saving, the origin of economic attitudes and the relation of these to economic behavior.
This work has been supported by various governmental organizations, private business firms, and foundations.
A second major program of research conducted by the Survey Research Center has been concerned with discovering some of the underlying principles applicable to the problems of organizing and managing human activity. This program was initially directed by Professor Daniel Katz (Buffalo '25, Ph.D. Syracuse '28) and later by Robert L. Kahn (Michigan '39, Ph.D. ibid. '52). In 1947 a ten-year program was outlined in this area, which provided for the study, in sequence, of a variety of functioning organizations to explore the social and interpersonal determinants of organizational effectiveness and employee satisfaction. Substantial projects have been conducted within this broad program in an insurance company, a railroad, a public utility, an automobile factory, a governmental administrative agency, a research agency, a household appliance factory, a professional society, four labor unions, and other similar organizations. An important aspect of this research is the experimental testing of concepts and hypotheses developed from earlier studies. One such experiment has involved the creation of contrasting organizations with respect to the level of decision-making and the effects of this difference on productivity and morale. Another has been concerned with the process of introducing change in organizational structure and of individual behavior.
One of the early and continuing interests of the Survey Research Center has been that of the perceptions, values, and behavior of the American people in their role as citizens. One of the first studies undertaken by the Center was an inquiry into public understanding and evaluation of certain aspects of the nation's actions in the field of foreign affairs. Subsequent research has been carried out in the broad area of public reaction to policy issues. In addition, there have been extensive investigations, using the sample interview method, of such diverse problems as: the social implications of atomic energy developments, the factors influencing voter decision in presidential elections, the sources and impact of information on public issues, and the role of large corporations in our society. Studies in this series have also concerned the needs and experiences of teen-age boys in relation
