Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x24gv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-30T18:55:14.227Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Notes on the Measurement of Values

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Daniel Scott Smith
Affiliation:
The author is Professor of History, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60680.

Abstract

Historians frequently use values to explain behavior. Since their studies focus on the behavior, they have neglected to measure values and change in values. The current practices of historians of values will not yield conclusions usable in the history of behavior.

Type
Papers Presented at the Forty-fourth Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1985

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Pruitt, Bettye Hobbs, “Self-Sufficiency and the Agricultural Economy of Eighteenth-Century Massachusetts,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 41 (07 1984), pp. 333–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Hays, Samuel P., “Scientific versus Traditional History: the Limitations of the Current Debate,” Historical Methods, 17 (Spring 1984), p. 77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Ariès, Philippe, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, trans. Baldick, Robert (New York, 1962).Google ScholarPollock, Linda A., Forgotten Children: Parent-Child Relations from 1500 to 1900 (Cambridge, 1983).Google Scholar

4 That the importance of different aspects of the significance of children does vary over time is suggested by the cross-cultural variation summarized by Bulatao, Rodolfo A., “On the Nature of the Transition in the Value of Children,” Papers of the East-West Population Institute, no. 60-A (Honolulu, 1979).Google Scholar

5 Marcus, Steven, The Other Victorians: A Study of Sexuality and Pornography in Mid-Nineteenth-Century England (2nd ed., New York, 1974), pp. 133.Google ScholarGordon, Michael, “From an Unfortunate Necessity to a Cult of Mutual Orgasm: Sex in American Marital Education Literature, 1830–1940,” in Henslin, James M., ed., Studies in the Sociology of Sex (New York, 1971), pp. 5377.Google Scholar

6 Degler, Carl N., “What Ought to be and What Was: Woman's Sexuality in the Nineteenth Century,” American Historical Review, 79 (12 1974), pp. 1467–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Wilson, Adrian, “Inferring Attitudes from Behavior,” Historical Methods, 14 (Summer 1981), pp. 143–44.CrossRefGoogle ScholarSmith, Daniel Scott and Hindus, Michael S., “Premarital Pregnancy in America, 1640–1971: An Overview and Interpretation,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 5 (Spring 1975), pp. 537–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Smith, Daniel Scott, “Child-Naming Practices, Kinship Ties, and Change in Family Attitudes in Hingham, Massachusetts, 1641 to 1880,” Journal of Social History, 18 (Summer 1985, forthcoming).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Foucault, Michel, The History of Sexuality, trans. Hurley, Robert (New York, 1978) mistakes the increasing volume of publication on the subject for a willingness to discuss it.Google Scholar

10 Fischer, David Hackett, Growing Old in America (New York, 1978);Google ScholarAchenbaum, W. Andrew, Old Age in the New Land: the American Experience since 1790 (Baltimore, 1978).Google Scholar

11 Diamond, Sigmund, The Reputation of the American Businessman (New York, 1955).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 For a review see Woodrum, Eric, “‘Mainstreaming’ Content Analysis in Social Science: Methodological Advantages, Obstacles, and Solutions,” Social Science Research, 13 (03 1984), pp. 119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar