Abstract
In recent years, a desire for better social information has spurred tremendous interest in the development of a satisfactory means of measuring and monitoring social change by means of social indicators. Despite a large amount of research activity, the progress toward the development of usable social indicators has been disappointing. The research in this dissertation was directed toward the primary goal of providing a general theoretical model that can be used to construct indicators of social change utilizing available sources of data. The theoretical model is based upon the concept of a state-determined system. The state of a system is defined as a collection of quantitative attributes which, together with the inputs into the system, uniquely determines the outputs of the system. The state of a social system is a joint function of its cybernetic nature and of the inputs into the system. Changes in systemic inputs disburb the dynamic equilibrium of a social system and generate tensions between different parts of the system. Because of the nature of social systems, there will be a cybernetic lag that determines what the outputs of the system will be at any particular time in response to a particular set of inputs, and thus determines the state of a social system. A particular econometric model, the partial-adjustment model was used to quantify the theoretical systems model. The application of the theoretical concepts developed in the study to the construction of social indicators was tested by using them to construct demographic systems models to explain the dynamic behavior of three institutional systems: (1) the nursing-home system, (2) the educational system, and (3) the prison system..
Fuller, Theron K. (1977). A systems analytic approach to the construction of social indicators. Texas A&M University. Texas A&M University. Libraries. Available electronically from
https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /DISSERTATIONS -358261.