For the past hundred years, the social survey has been a major tool of social investigation, and its use has also been linked to social reform. Starting with the landmark surveys of Charles Booth in London and Jane Addams in Chicago, social surveys in both Britain and the Unites States investigated poverty, unemployment and other difficult social conditions. While in Britain there was marked continuity between the early studies of Booth and others, in the US the social survey movement exercised curiously little impact upon empirical social science. This 2001 book traces the history of the social Survey in Britain and the US, with two chapters on Germany and France. It discusses the aims and interests of those who carried out early surveys, and the links between the social survey and the growth of empirical social science. The contributors are drawn from a range of disciplines, including history, sociology, political science, demography and geography.

Table of Contents:
List of figures; List of tables; List of maps; Notes on contributors; Preface; 1. The social survey in historical perspective Martin Bulmer, Kevin Bales and Kathryn Kish Sylar; 2. The social survey in social perspective, 1830–1930 Eileen Janes Yeo; 3. Charles Booth's survey of Life and Labour of the People in London 1889–1903 Kevin Bales; 4. Hull-House Maps and Papers: social science as women's work in the 1890s Kathryn Kish Sylar; 5. The place of social investigation, social theory and social work in the approach to late Victorian and Edwardian social problems: the case of Beatrice Webb and Helen Bosanquet Jane Lewis; 6. W. E. B. Du Bois as a social investigator: The Philadelphia Negro 1899 Martin Bulmer; 7. Concepts of poverty in the British social surveys from Charles Booth to Arthur Bowley E. P. Hennock; 8. The part in relation to the whole: how to generalise? The prehistory of representative sampling Alain Desrosières; 9. The Pittsburgh Survey and the Social Survey Movement: a sociological road not taken Steven R. Cohen; 10. The world of the academic quantifiers: the Columbia University family and its connections Stephen P. Turner; 11. The decline of The Social Survey Movement and the rise of American empirical sociology Martin Bulmer; 12. The social survey in Germany before 1933 Irmela Gorges; 13. Anglo-American contacts in the development of research methods before 1945 Jennifer Platt; 14. The social survey in historical perspective: a governmental perspective Roger Davidson; 15. The dangers of castle building - surveying the social survey Seth Koven; Index.