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Graphical representation of the dynamic interactions among the elements of a system has found wide application in business, government, & the "system sciences." Although system representation is now ad hoc, it may be possible to develop a standard theoretical presentation in terms of the interaction & feedback of biological, biosocial, cultural, & situational determinants of behavior. The resulting framework must, of course, be modified for each problem addressed, yet the framework forces the analysis to be dynamic as well as static, to avoid overemphasis on factors of interest to a particular investigator, & to show more precisely the effect of adopting alternative social theories. Examining the applicability of this proposed framework to a variety of problems suggests that this approach will assist in the transfer of information between applied & theoretical studies & in the cumulation of social science knowledge. 1 Table, 8 Figures. AA.

'Social-science research has been transformed over the last generation by the advent and expansion of the general social surveys (GSS). The GSS model of research has created a infrastructure for the social sciences designed to address the interests and research agenda of scholars and their students; cover a wide range of topics; utilize reliable, valid, and generalizable measurement; and provide data both across nations and across time. This design in turn has generated widespread analysis and notably contributed to our understanding of social processes and societal change.' (author's abstract)|

By sociology Pareto means a synthesis of all the particular researches and disciplines dealing with human society—law, economics, political history, the history of religion, and so on—in a search for the relationships between social facts (1, 2). Sociology is to provide a framework into which will fit the results of these specialized studies; it is to be a comprehensive study which aims at discovering the principles underlying the form and changes of society in general.Such is Pareto's own formulation. It is apparent that he believes both that there are general principles underlying the form and changes of society, and that these can be discovered by a new discipline, sociology, working on the results of the specialized studies. The primary concern of the new discipline must therefore be methodology, and Pareto devotes much more attention to the problem of method in the social sciences than he does to the construction of his own theory of society. His justification for this is his belief that the methods of all previous sociologists have been basically faulty and can lead only to invalid conclusions. In this paper it is proposed to follow Pareto's emphasis, and to deal with his analysis of social facts and his general theory of society primarily with a view to bringing out those aspects which raise the problem of method in the social sciences.