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Doubts about the easy equation of economic growth & social progress in the 1960s led to renewed interest in social measurement & to the birth of the 'social indicators movement.' Social Indicators, 1976, (US Office of Management & Budget), a product of that interest, can be read as both a report on social conditions & trends in the US & as a progress report on social indicators research. The volume is best understood against the background of the social indicators movement & of the research it has stimulated. Several research traditions are joined together in the social indicators movement, but they share a concern for measurement, analysis, & the reporting to a general audience of aspects of social conditions. The tradition best reflected in Social Indicators, 1976 stresses monitoring, & reporting social change. Research in this tradition emphasizes conceptual & methodological development of measures, improvements in available data bases, development of social indicator models, & social reporting. In its data selection, treatment of data, organization, & commentary, Social Indicators, 1976, is an improvement over Social Indicators, 1973, though its analysis is notably insufficient. Most of the improvements which should be found in future editions depend upon continued progress in the development of social indicators. 3 Tables, 3 Charts. Modified HA.

This paper analyzes a model of social learning in a social network. Agents decide whether or not to adopt a new technology with unknown payoffs based on their prior beliefs and the experiences of their neighbors in the network. Using a mean-field approximation, we prove that the diffusion process always has at least one stable equilibrium, and we examine the dependence of the set of equilibria on the model parameters and the structure of the network. In particular, we show how first and second order stochastic dominance shifts in the degree distribution of the network impact diffusion. We find that the relationship between equilibrium diffusion levels and network structure depends on the distribution of payoffs to adoption and the distribution of agents' prior beliefs regarding those payoffs, and we derive the precise conditions characterizing those relationships. For example, in contrast to contagion models of diffusion, we find that a first order stochastic dominance shift in the degree distribution can either increase or decrease equilibrium diffusion levels depending on the relationship between agents' prior beliefs and the payoffs to adoption. Surprisingly, adding more links can decrease diffusion even when payoffs from the new technology exceed those of the status quo in expectation.

Abstract
This essay addresses the moral nature of corporate social media platforms through the lenses of Axel Honneth's concept of justice, according to which relations of mutual recognition must be institutionalized into spheres of social freedom to claim a just society. This perspective allows us to observe how platforms configure a symmetrically inverted form of ethical sphere, in which users are led to formulate non-autonomous desires that can only be realized socially. We characterize this as social unfreedom. A just platform ought to be the one in which rights and self-legislation capabilities enable users to have a stake in governing how these digital spaces can be designed to foster the practical realization of users' autonomous aims, the essay argues.

Social measurements are differentiated from social indicators by their ultimate objectives, even though both are interdependent in social evaluation & explanation. While social measurement tries to obtain reliable quantitative data on social phenomena for a variety of interests & purposes, social indicators present evidence more closely related to problems of human well-being. Three problem areas in developing social indicators are identified: (1) technical problems related to social measurement; (2) sociopolitical problems, eg, ideological biases in problem definition, data presentation, & interpretation; & (3) communication problems that impede the effective presentation of information to policymakers & the general public. Modified HA.

Social policy in the European Union has developed rapidly in recent years, following the 2000 Lisbon Summit and the subsequent adoption of National Action Plans on Social Inclusion and a set of common social indicators for all Member States. This paper describes European initiatives and examines the role played by social science research in these developments. It refers specifically to the role of theory and conceptual analysis, to the availability and quality of data, and to policy modelling. It draws lessons from the experience of European social policy for the relationship between research and policy formation.