Year: 1988
Type: article
Abstract: On the occasion of the twentieth-anniversary issue of the Public Opinion Quarterly in 1957, an issue devoted to twenty years of public opinion research, Herbert Hyman reflected on the existing state of theory about public opinion (Hyman, 1957; pp. 54-60). The state of theory was bleak, he commented, if one looked for a grand theory that integrated the vast empirical findings of past and contemporary studies of public opinion. Things looked brighter, however, if one looked for theoretical orientations of more modest scope, for example, theories of the middle range, a phrase suggested by Robert K. Merton (Merton 1949; pp. 4-5).
Author: Charles R. Wright
Institution: University of Pennsylvania
Language: English
Subfield: Communication
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7055470