Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
Except perhaps for a few diehards, no sociologist today would think of conducting a large-scale empirical investigation of numerical data without a firm grasp of statistical methods—or at least a graduate assistant who has such a grasp. The old polemics about statistics in social research have died away and are now lost to view under a blizzard of statistical findings in journal articles and books. Asked to date the period when statistical analysis really ‘took over’ in social research, most sociologists would probably put the date around i960, when large computers and efficient programs became widely available. But the date of widespread adoption is perhaps not as significant as the date on which the leaders in the field became convinced of the desirability of using powerful statistical methods in the analysis of standardized data.