Page 72 - The Importance of Common Metrics for Advacing Social Science Theory and Research

The Importance of Common Metrics for Advancing Social Science Theory and Research: A Workshop Summary
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60 THE IMPORTANCE OF COMMON METRICS

linking surveys to administrative records, and building exclusively and
directly on administrative data, such as those from the Internal Revenue
Service and the Social Security Administration. Grusky argued for the latter
approach, because it would generate an extremely large data set that would
facilitate cross-group comparisons, permit analyses of term income histories
that better approximate permanent income, make detailed occupations
available and linkable to those of dependent children, and provide data on
family structure and (imputed) wealth. Of course administrative records
data have limitations, but Grusky believes the quality of the data would
improve over the long run if monitoring efforts were dependent on them.
He then discussed the merits of having a standardized measure of
intergenerational mobility. Detractors argue that it would saddle the field
with a problematic standard and suppress innovation. The alternative
view is that some sort of national measurement system for monitoring
mobility would in fact inspire more critical research. Whether more re-
search is beneficial depends on the opportunity cost, that is, what other
research is being squeezed out that is more important to pursue.

DISCUSSION
In discussing these presentations, Christine Bachrach observed that a
number of concepts (e.g., marital status, social mobility, poverty) have been
characterized as Ballungen. In some cases there are concepts that truly are
not precisely defined, like happiness. But some of the others seem amenable
to disaggregation into very precisely defined smaller components. In the
case of marital status, it appeared to her that new meanings were being
tagged to a measure and a concept that is actually very precisely defined.
Marriage is a legal status, precisely defined by law. She questioned whether
introducing such dimensions as living arrangements, relationship stability,
and relationship status into marital status might lead to the creation of a
definition that is unnecessarily imprecise.
Nancy Cartwright responded that, for many concepts, it is certainly
possible to provide more precise definitions, which is necessary for mak-
ing scientifically defensible comparisons and tracking changes. Bradburn
added that the more one defines a concept precisely for scientific purposes,
the further it can depart from its originally intended meaning and the rich
everyday concept that people think it means. On one hand, with respect to
poverty, Cartwright suggested, it might be more helpful to simply have the
array of poverty definitions available if the ordinary concept of poverty is
not described properly by any single one of them. On the other hand, on
specific occasions one of the definitions might be the right one to use.
David Johnson (U.S. Census Bureau) raised a question about the lack of
a single accepted disability measure. He observed that there is a disability

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