COMPARATIVE STANDARDS OF SOCIAL-SCIENCE PERIODICALS.

PERIODICALS; EVALUATION; HART, Hornell; SOCIOLOGICAL Review, The (Periodical); POLITICAL Science Quarterly (Periodical); RATING

The present article has to present new data as to the relative standards of verifiability maintained by various social-science periodicals; additional evidence of the reliability of independent verifiability scale ratings; and to analyze comparatively the contents of representative samples from the American and British "The Sociological Review." The article on "Measuring Degrees of Verification in Sociological Writings," which appeared in the February 1947 issue of the American Sociological Review, defined the original method, and presented data for eight sociological journals. In the fall of 1946, sociologist Dr. Hornell Hart continued this project as a teaching aid in his course on sociological statistics. Ten members of the class each rated 55 or more articles which appeared during 1946 in three issues from each of the three periodicals, namely, the American Sociological Review, the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, and the Political Science Quarterly. The basic principles employed in these follow-up studies are the same, but improved and abridged methods of rating were used.