Page 81 - 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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SOCIAL SCIENCE CONSTRUCTS 69

the frame shifts from the impact of “my” work to the impact of “our”
work, then there must be some agreement on what it is we are doing, why
we are doing it, and how we do it. Moser observed that this type of effort
is challenging because it requires an altruistic stance on behalf of the field.
In thinking of the criteria for standardization on one hand, and the
coherence and robustness of the metric on the other, Geoff Mulgan pointed
to the need for some assessment of how the standardized metric will be used
and also the cost of not having a standardized metric. He supplied three
examples that follow from the comments above.

1. Social mobility is at the moment very politically contested, in the
United Kingdom and in other countries, because of cross-national
studies appearing to show deceleration or stagnation of social
mobility. However, there is no agreement about the appropriate
statistics and their meaning, and this is impeding basic democratic
debate about what society should do about the issue. Even an
imperfect indicator can be important to allow a society to have a
competent discussion about proper actions to take.
2. There is a traditional materialist bias in all the poverty measures
that no longer resonates with what poverty really means or with
essentially abundant societies in which social support and psycho-
logical needs matter as much as material needs. This disjuncture
makes it difficult for society to have a serious conversation about
what should be done about need and undermines the legitimacy of
actions that appear to follow from the measures. Again, Mulgan
would rather have a good-enough set of reasonably widely agreed-
on measures than perfect agreement on a measure that does not fit
with the underlying public discourse on the issues.
3. He is involved in setting up a network of schools that emphasizes
the development of social intelligence, self-regulation, and cogni-
tive skills. The effort must demonstrate success to a very metric-
focused school system. There is an urgent need for a good-enough
metric, which may be one or two measures of self-regulation. The
school system cannot wait 5-10 years for the perfect metric. He
called for consideration of the conditions acceptable for creating
measures that are imperfect but good enough.

Grusky contended that the case for standardization could be made
more forcefully, particularly in social mobility. He noted that the Pew
Charitable Trusts is supporting an economic mobility project and is actively
publicizing the results. If it were to make its measures official, they could
be better than good enough as standardized measures. Grusky believes such
an effort could crystallize the best that can be found in the scientific com-

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