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Sweden, Central Bureau of Statistics, Social Report on Inequality in Sweden: Distribution of Welfare at the End of the 1970s, No. 27 in the series Living Conditions (Endi~h translation of Report No. 21), prepared by Joachim Vogel, National Central Bureau of Statistics, Stockholm, 1981, 156 pages. Those who are interested in statistical social reporting will fred this document an excellent model of a social report. Although lacking in time series, it is outstanding in other respects. Prepared for use in "the welfare debate," the report is one of a series based on the Swedish survey of Hying conditions and published under the series title Living Conditions. It reflects the tradition of interest in Sweden, and elsewhere in Scandinavia, in questions of social equality. Social Report on Inequality in Sweden is distinctive in being grounded in an explicit theory of the political functions of social reporting - the theory associated with the Swedish sociologist Sten Johansson, whose contribution the report acknowledges. According to Johansson, social reports are a factual contribution to the political debate about the well-being of the citizens. The function of social reports is to describe "how things are." "How things ought to be" is a judgment that is produced by the political process. "What ought to be done" about the contrast between how things are and how they ought to be is also a judgment worked out by the political process, although with technical assistance. The role of social reports is fact-f'mding according to standards of acceptable conditions that are produced by the poetical process. The report includes chapters on the expected topics: education, employment and working hours, economic resources and material standard of living, housing, transportation, leisure, safety and security, and health. In addition, there are chapters on working conditions, social relations (frequency of family and neighborhood contacts; availability of assistance) and political resources (political and organizational activity). Each of these chapters presents multiple measurements of the main topic (e.g., health) and shows these for the population classified on several dimensions. For example, the Social Indicators Research 14 (1984), 477.
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various measures of housing conditions are first shown for demographic groups (by age, sex, and stage of the family life cycle); then for socio-economic groups (occupation, whether self-employed, and education); then for "problem groups"; and f'mally for geographical areas of Sweden. The "problem groups" are groups with problems: national minorities, and people with little education or with family maintenance burdens, unemployment, low income, few social contacts, disabilities, or bad working conditions. Most of the numbers shown are percentages of various groups (e.g., men or women) reporting a particular characteristic (e.g., their work offers few opportunities to learn new things). Next to each percentage we are given an adjustment factor that enables us to discount the effect of age differences on the comparisons between groups. A "summary analysis" offers an analysis of group differences with respect to the main dimensions of welfare. The chapter emphasizes the accumulation of bad conditions in particular groups, and attributes the distribution of welfare to social stratification, as reflected in economic hardship in childhood and in having parents who themselves had little education. A striking feature of the report is the chapter on '~velfare profiles," in which selected measures covering all social conditions reported in the survey are shown for various groups. For example, senior salaried employees are compared with workers on several measures of childhood hardship, adult working conditions, standard of living, and "quality of fife," a category which encompasses measures of relationship to the job, to other individuals, and to organizations and politics. This presentation facilitates comparison of several variables for any one group and comparison of several groups on any one variable. It also helps one to form a general impression of the distribution of well-being. Following Zapf's criteria for evaluating social reports, I see the following strengths in this document: (1) Systematic description, which could hardly be better for making the welfare comparisons which are the purpose of the book. (2) Clear standards of evaluation. In accordance with what seems to be a general preference in Scandinavian social reporting, the measures focus on "bad conditions" rather than on group averages and distributions. According to Allardt, this is because it is easier to get consensus on bad conditions than on what constitutes a satisfactory distribution. (3) The conceptualization of welfare as a single complex with many inter-
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acting dimensions. In particular, several of the dimensions of welfare are conceptualized as resources - political, social, and economic - which reflect opportunity to alter one's condition and influence one's life and surroundings. (4) Variables with strong intuitive meaning. When I read that 48 percent of wage workers but only 28 percent of salaried workers (age adjusted) feel they don't know enough to present an opinion at a meeting, it tells me something about their lives which is not conveyed by a comparison of their years of schooling. The document is not as strong as some others in the following respects: (1) Limitation to a single data source. This may seem an odd criticism, since the singularity of the data source is what makes possible the stunning breadth of the comparisons that are given. It is intended as a reminder that in a household survey we interview only survivors, hence lack the information that mortality gives us about health, and lack also the many administratively derived measures, common in other reports, which household surveys are poor at collecting. (2) Absence of time series (though these are promised in a subsequent publication). The absence of time series in the report means that we cannot, from the data presented, trace the evolution of differences among measures and among groups. (3) The lack of data over time means that we and the author are unable to evaluate the author's theory of the accumulation of disadvantage in particular groups. It is one thing to show, as the report does, that some groups have multiple problems and that these are associated with childhood hardship and low levels of education. It is another thing to demonstrate that one bad thing leads to another. For this we need observations over time and models that relate successive states of individuals and families. The numbers shown in the report are consistent with the view that social stratification is responsible for the transmission of disadvantage, but they do not test it. In summary, Social Report on Inequality in Sweden does a free job of description, despite the absence of time series, and a free job of conveying evaluations of what is observed (through its focus on "bad" conditions). It offers an interpretive framework (social stratification) which gives coherence to the report even though, for the reasons I have given, it cannot be entirely convincing. The report is, accordingly, less strong on the explanatory side than recent reports on inequality issued by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Consistent with the doctrine of social reporting to which it adheres,
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the report makes no attempt to comment on policy. It is, altogether, a superb piece of work that should give new life to the social reporting movement.
Social Science Research Council [ U.S.), Washington, D.C.
ROBERT PARKE
Hoorweg, Jan and Ian McDowell, Evaluation o f Nutrition Education in Africa - Community Development in Uganda, 1971-1972, Mouton Publishers, The Hague, Paris, New York, 1979, 158 pages, with 7 figures and 36 tables, DM 22,-. General appraisal Clarity of writing Charts, tables Appendices
acceptable good good excellent description of the methods used
The value of this study lies in the fact that such an investigation was made at all. It is, however, too wordy, in parts repetitious, and at times the study goes into such detail that only those interested in nutritional education will read it to the end. This is regrettable. The beginning of the book and some of its later parts are excellent. A brief introductory background: Uganda is situated in the center of Africa. It has a population of 12 million, belonging to different ethnic groups and tribes. Nearly half of Uganda's population is less than 14 years old. The capital, Kampala, has 330 000 inhabitants. Protein-energy malnutrition in early childhood is widely prevalent in developing countries. It is estimated that from 5-10% of the younger children in these countries suffer from severe protein malnutrition and that as many as 20-30%, sometimes even 40% of them suffer from moderate malnutrition. Childhood malnutrition is not limited to times of famine, to barren areas, or to impoverished groups. The endemic causes of malnutrition stem from the health conditions (the prevalence of infections), diet, and child-rearing practices. In Uganda meals consist of a staple food as a main dish - matooke (a cooking banana), cassava (with their fleshy edible roots), sweet potatoes, Social Indicators Research 14 (1984), 480.
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millet, plantain (also a banana plant), or rice - together with a small side dish which may consist of legumes (shelled groundnuts, dry mixed beans or cow peas), of vegetables (cabbage, onions, tomatoes), or occasionally of meat or fish. Where matooke, cassava or sweet potatoes form the main diet, an individual must get large helpings for the necessary nutritional requirements to be met, as these foods are low in calory value and protein content. Children usually eat only the staple food, since the meat is tough and fish is cooked whole with the bones. The authors carried out a series of small-scale studies at two nutritional rehabgitation centers where malnutrition in its most severe form is treated. The educational programs were tried out on mothers of children at (1) the in-patient, (2) the out-patient departments of the nutritional rehabilitation center in Kampala, and (3) at an out-patient clinic at Luteete, some 40 miles away. The author studied changes in nutritional knowledge and attitudes of the mothers, and obtained an insight into both the educational process and its success or failure. Indices to measure understanding and attitudes were developed and tested, prior to evaluation. The authors found that it was possible to use indicators other than "nutritional status" to evaluate their nutritional education programs. The nutritional status indicators are (1) the child's weight expressed as a percentage of the weight expected at that age, and (2) the recovery rate, based on the weight gained. The ratings based on semantic differentials appear to be the least sensitive indicators. Here the person interviewed judges something as "good" (as opposed to bad), by indicating whether he or she considers it slightly good, quite good, or very good. The authors came to the conclusion that the semantic differential is of limited use in assessing changes among populations having little or no education. The results obtained by means of knowledge scales and paired comparison methods were more satisfactory. For the knowledge scales questions were asked, such as "Is milk a body-building [this was the word used to denote foods with a substantial protein content] food, is matooke ..." Examples of paired comparisons were: matooke with bean soup, matooke with meat soup, matooke with cabbage ... The paired comparisons proved to be the most suited for analyzing attitudinal changes.
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What were the differences between the teaching at the out-patient depart. ment and at the in-patient ward that may explain the findings? The in-patients' course was more intensive, and in-patients' mothers prepare the food for their children. The in-patients showed a strong shift in preference towards the sthple foods that were used at the clinic. This had not been the intention of the teaching. This was a change to staple foods that contain less calories and less proteins. "It certainly shows that the mothers learn httle of the value of different staple foods and one wonders whether the policy of not saying anything detrimental about the traditional staple does not, in this instance, prove to be counterproductive. In all it is a shift that we do not feel happy about ..." (p. 87) Other studies concentrated on the role of social and economic factors in the recovery of malnourished children. On the basis of these findings, it seems that the rural young child clinic is the best suited for carrying through such an educational program. The mothers here form a relatively homogeneous group. In towns the best prognosis for recovery appears to be where children live in small, stable families. In the rural areas, the opposite is true; there those children recover best who live in large families or in families which own sufficient land.
ARGE fuer Lebensniveauvergleiche, Vienna
LORE SCHEER
S.D. Berkowitz, An Introduction to Structural Analysis. The Network Approach to Social Research, Toronto: Butterworth and Co., 1982, ix + 234 pages, $16.95. This is a new book on an old sociological topic, namely structural analysis. Under the name of "network approach" it has recently started a new carreer and the question is whether this is old wine in new bottles or whether the network approach enables us really to find new aspects and perspectives with regard to the indoubtedly fundamental problem of social structure and its analysis. The author states that his "book is intended as a brief ... introduction to the key concepts, central intellectual themes, and principal methodoSocial Indicators Research 14 (1984), 482.
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logical techniques of a new approach to social science" (VII), which is defined as follows: "structural analysis is an approach to theorizing about, representing, and analyzing social processes which emphasizes their systemic character"
(VII). It seems that one has to have a very reduced view of sociology in mind, in order to call this approach "new". The author refers to "conventional sociologists" who are seemingly not able to recognize that "'we live in a world which is increasingly complex and interrelated" (VIII), and which therefore is in need of structural or network analysis. But where is it written, that we should have "conventional sociologists" as our reference group or "conventional approaches" as guiding lines for sociological research. If we do not accept this notion but refer to the best (or maybe also to the worst) tradition of social sciences, the idea of structural analysis may be called as old as these disciplines. It was not without reason that sociologists have fought against holistic theories (as an empirically substantiated general systems theory might be called) because very often they contributed more to an obscuration than to an enlightenment of social reality. But even if "structural analysis" is reduced to an application of the concepts of general systems theory in the social sciences, as the author does, this approach is not so new either. What then does this book offer? The first chapter is devoted to the question: What is structural analysis? The second chapter deals with the structure of interpersonal communication, the third refers to economic structure and dite integration while the fourth chapter treats structural models of large-scale processes, All these problems and questions are being treated carefully and in a solid manner and sociology students may gain valuable insights from studying them and performing the exercises at the end of each chapter. It is, however, difficult to see whether they really would get deeper insights into the respective fields as they can get from analyses based on the so-called middle range theories of sociological sub-disciplines like sociology of organization etc. Chapter Five finally deals with the future of structural analysis. The author comes to the conclusion that "structural analysis" (as he defines it) may well lead to the formation of a new kind of "general social science paradigm" (p. 161). The reviewer has severe doubts whether the social sciences will ever develop a general paradigm; but the future is open. There is, however, no
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doubt, that Berkowitz' book is a good introduction to the application of a general systems approach in social sciences and as such it is worthwhile reading.
University of Z f i r i c h
HANS-JOACHIM HOFFMANN-NOWOTNY
