Social Relations Does Self-Analysis in Exhaustive Report

Four years ago a senior by the name of Ralph Kats decided to do his honors thesis by turning social relations methods on the Social Relations Department and then drawing a picture of a field as its concentrators saw it. Last February the department dug up Katz's thesis and adapted it to discover how Social Relations had changed since 1948.

Last week the task of compiling and analyzing the data was completed and the final report submitted to the faculty.

Professor Samuel A. Stouffer and head tutor Joseph A. Kahl were in charge of the project. At the beginning of the term, each concentrator was asked to fill out an anonymous questionnaire before his tutor signed his study card, and over 95 percent of the students complied.

Some of the most significant results gleaned from the study were: 1. The number of men in Social Relations has sharply declined since 1948. 2. The field is not so easy as some people think. 3. Right now the men in the department represent almost exactly a proportional cross section of the college population as far as ethnic group, family income, and type of secondary school education is concerned. 4. There is no "best course" or "best professor."

Since Katz's study the department's enrollment has dropped from 500 to 360, and Kahl attributes the decrease to two factors: the levelling effect of a new and unweildly department finally reaching a period of stability, and the stepped-up program of General Education which allows fewer freshmen to take Social Relations la.

Grew Too Fast

"Of course the department has gotten smaller," Kahl says, "but it may not be smaller than it ought to be, because we really cannot say what would be a normal enrollment." In the years following the department's inception in '46 it grew large very quickly. It was a new field that offered a broad program of study, and at its peak in the class of '50, the department was drawing an over large number of men who were not vocationally interested in the subject matter. These were students who were looking for a general education at a time when the college's General Education program was in an extremely experimental and formative stage. For them Social Relations presented in broad enough field in which to work, and its liberal concentration requirements allowed students to take a wide number of courses outside the department.

But since '48, says Kahl, the department has in a sense found itself. Through the past four years of experimentation the field has become better defined, and although its scope has not changed. It is attracting many more people who are vocationally interested in the social sciences and fewer dilletantes.

Due to the expansion of the General Education program, Kahl finds fewer men taking Social Relations la-in their freshman year, thus making it difficult for a man to discover the field before he is farther along in school. In each of the classes of 52, 53, and '54 about 25 percent of those who took la in their freshman year later became concentrators. But the total number of freshmen in la has dropped 33 percent in the last three years.

Along with this finding, Kahl discovered that almost 45 percent of those men now concentrating in Social Relations had switched from another field.

We cannot assume, he adds, "that the student who comes in late does it because he is looking for the easy way out since on the whole the marks of these students are as good as those who have concentrated in the field since the end of their freshman year.

One of the study's most revealing findings was the destruction of the notion that Social relations is a "gut" department. Kahl decided that the best way to discover the validity of this notion would be to ask the students whether they got better, the same, or lower marks in courses given by the department as in courses outside the field.

The results were remarkable. Twenty-five percent said that their grades in Social Relations-were lower than in other courses, 12 percent said they were higher, and 59 percent answered that they got about the same marks in the field as in their other subjects.

"This would indicate to me," Kahl says, "that the department is not so easy as some people think. And by all indications (in '48 only 18 percent said they had lower grades in Soc. Rel. courses) it is becoming a bit stiffer than before."

Stiffer Marking

More stringent grading is a reason for one of the more interesting findings in the survey. Despite the fact that the size of the department has decreased in the past four years, and much of the dilletante element has dropped out, the overall level of marks has not changed.

But even more than the more difficult grading, Kahl discovered another factor that has kept the grades constant as the department has decreased in size.

After ranking the students by categories according to background to discover what type of men do the best work, Kahl found that although there were proportionally more people in the better categories now than in '48, and although the relative ranking of these categories had not changed since '48, there seemed to be a tendency for each group as a whole to do poorer work than those of four years ago.

He found that Jewish students got the best grades, and were followed by Protestants and Catholics from public high-schools, non-final club men from private schools, and final club members. While there are proportionally more people in the first two categories than in '48, Kahl feels they are getting lower grades than their predecessors. Because of the increase in the relative size of the upper groups, however, the grade level, rather than decreasing, has remained the same.

Those who get the highest grades are men who have already chosen their profession and are in the partment because they feel it will help them in their future careers. Two hundred sixty-three, or 73 percent of the concentrators intend to go on to some professional training.

Graduate Schools

After breaking these men down by intended occupations, Kahl discovered that 18 percent of the concentrators wanted to get into business school, 8 percent were future lawyers, 13 percent were applying to medical school, and 17 percent intended to go on with social relations. Another 17 percent signified they wanted to go to some graduate school, but were not yet sure of their choice.

One of the most significant findings of the report was that the students in Social Relations represented almost a complete cross-section of the college population.

In addition to the 47-53 percent ratio of private to public school graduates, the students were representative of the college population as far as family income and father's occupations were concerned. One-fifth of the student's fathers were Harvard graduates, which is also the college average, but only 1 percent were sons of Princeton or Yale men.

A major part of the study was concerned with finding out what the students thought of the department as a whole and what courses they considered to be the best and the worst.

"Students approved of the fact that the department represented a serious attempt to look at social life from a variety of perspectives Kahl said, "and they could understand the value of having the approaches of several professors.

He went on to say that the better students exhibited a sense of satisfaction in helping to work out solutions to these complex social problems.

"But some students feel that this approach is a confusing one, that there are too many unintegrated conceptual schemes to be grasped."

Kahl says that the department realizes this problem and the student's comments bore out ideas that members of the Faculty have held for some time. A faculty committee is already set up to do away with the overlapping prevalent in several courses.

Notion Destroyed

The study also destroyed the notion that there is any best or worst professor or course.

"Students like professors who approach the world the way they do," Kahl says.

"For instance, many men said la is the best course and many others called it the worst, but we found that the former were mainly interested in individual psychology and liked the course for its content in addition to its professor. The overwhelming percentage of those who disliked is and who felt 1b to be the finest course the department offered were majoring in Sociology."

In a situation like this, Kahl continues, it is necessary to take into consideration not only the personality of the professors, but the interest of the students in the content of the course, and the personality of the students themselves.

When the final report was presented to the department last week, the faculty said that it would be useful to their discussions of policy. Although Kahl states that a department can not do everything according to what the students desire, the findings will definitely be utilized in working for future improvements in the field.