The Social Science Research Council's 1940s restudy of Robert Angell's cases fromThe Family Encounters the Depression

Abstract

At the beginning of the 1940s the Social Science Research Council's Committee on the Appraisal of Research, then chaired by Ernest Burgess, commissioned a restudy of the cases and methods used by Robert Angell in his well-known book The Family Encounters the Depression.1 The restudy involved prominent sociologists. Burgess provided a draft report, but no final report appeared. The interest in and subsequent disappearance of the final report invites investigation. This paper summarizes the history and content of the draft report, and examines its meaning in the context of the methodology of the period. The nature and fate of the report reflect conflicting methodological tendencies at the time.