Social System Accounts

This book results from a research program on which I have spent most of my time since 1974. It addresses two of the major problems facing social system account ing: how to measure and account for nonmarket activities and how to combine social and economic indicators. The solution I propose is accounts based on behavior settings, a concept originated by Roger G. Barker more than thirty years ago. Behavior settings are the natural units of social activity into which people sort themselves to get on with the busi­ ness of daily life--grocery stores, school classes, reI i­ gious services, meetings, athletic events, and so on. The descriptive power of behavior settings has been established in surveys of complete communities in the United States and England, of high schools ranging in size from fewer than 100 to more than 2000 students, of rehabilitation centers in hospitals, and of several other types of organizations. Behavior settings are empirical facts of everyday life. A description of a community or an organization in terms of behavior settings corresponds to common experi­ ence. In many cases, small establishments are behavior settings; the paid roles in behavior settingsare occupa­ tions; and the buildings and equipment of establishments are the buildings and equipment of behavior settings.

1. Behavior Settings as a Basis for Social System Accounts.- 1.1 Social system accounting: two problems and a proposed solution.- 1.2 The plan of the book.- 2. The Usefulness of Behavior Settings for Classifying and Describing Human Activities in a Community.- 2.1 The discovery of behavior settings.- 2.2 Behavior settings and the meaning of comprehensiveness in social system accounts.- 2.3 Behavior settings and the meaning of improvements in a self-contained community.- 2.4 Describing a hypothetical community in terms of behavior settings: preliminary conceptualization.- 2.5 Describing an actual community in terms of behavior settings, I: authority systems, occupancy times, and inhabitant-setting intersections.- 2.6 The importance of schools, churches, and voluntary associations in providing opportunities for leadership, service, and social participation.- 2.7 Town and trade area as a community: implications of relative completeness and closure for social system accounts.- 2.8 Describing an actual community in terms of behavior settings, II: genotypes, programs, action patterns, and behavior mechanisms.- 2.9 The significance of time-allocations among behavior settings and some comments on Barker’s terminology.- 3. Behavior Settings and Objective Social Indicators.- 3.1 The OECD List of Social Indicators.- 3.2 A framework for discussing the relationship of individual well-being to behavior settings, stocks of physical capital, and objective social indicators.- 3.3 The relevance of stocks of physical capital to behavior settings and individual well-being.- 3.4 The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) estimates of stocks of physical capital and consumer durable goods in the United States, 1929–1979.- 3.5 OECD indicators relating aspects of the physical environment to individual well-being.- 3.6 Standard disaggregations of the OECD indicators as attributes of individuals and attributes of the environment.- 3.7 Comments on the remaining OECD indicators.- 3.8 Concluding remarks.- 4. The Classification of Behavior Settings in Social System Accounts.- 4.1 Interrelations between behavior setting genotypes and some other principles of classification.- 4.2 Should behavior settings be classified according to their profiles of ratings on action patterns and behavior mechanisms?.- 4.3 Should behavior settings be classified according to the age groups for which they are designed, the extent to which their performers are paid professionals, and/or the degree to which their amateur performers approach professional standards?.- 4.4 Barker’s criteria for deciding whether or not two behavior settings belong to the same genotype.- 4.5 Barker’s criteria for deciding whether or not two entities are components of a single behavior setting.- 4.6 Relationships between Barker’s categories and the Standard Industrial Classification.- 4.7 Some examples of SIC establishments picked up in Barker’s survey of Midwest and in economic censuses for the Des Moines SMSA.- 4.8 Further observations on behavior settings and the Standard Industrial Classification.- 5. The Classification of Roles in Social System Accounts.- 5.1 Roles in behavior settings and jobs in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles: relationships cited by Barker and his associates.- 5.2 Classifying occupations.- 5.3 Classifying unpaid roles.- 5.4 Behavior mechanisms in relation to role complexity and heaviness of work.- 5.5 Relations between DOT ratings of worker functions, DOT ratings of worker traits, and Census data on occupations and earnings.- 5.6 Roles and worker functions as attributes of the environment; worker traits as attributes of individuals.- 6. The Classification of Stocks of Physical Capital and Consumer Durables in Social System Accounts.- 6.1 Physical capital and OECD social indicators.- 6.2 The three OECD indicators of housing conditions: their relevance to the homes of Midwest.- 6.3 The OECD indicator of access to selected services: its relevance to the stores, schools, and service establishments of Midwest.- 6.4 The further implications of ‘access’ and of basic amenities: streets, sidewalks, water supply and sewage disposal systems, telephones and electric power.- 6.5 The OECD indicators of exposure to outdoor air pollutants and noise: their relevance to behavior settings and to defensive investments for pollution and noise control.- 6.6 Six OECD indicators and the residentiary environment of Midwest town.- 6.7 The OECD indicator of work environment nuisances.- 6.8 The OECD indicator of travel time to work.- 6.9 The larger community of Midwest: combined indicators and stocks of physical capital for town and trade area residents.- 6.10 The export base of the larger community of Midwest.- 6.11 Microcosm, U.S.A.: stocks of physical capital and consumer durables, 1929, 1954, and 1979.- 7. The Classification and Delineation of Communities and Regions in Social System Accounts.- 7.1 The classification of retail and wholesale trade centers.- 7.2 Classification of trade centers in the Des Moines BEA Economic Area.- 7.3 Trade center categories and the OECD social indicator of proximity to selected services.- 7.4 Social accounting matrices for successively larger communities and urban-centered regions.- 8. A Behavior Setting Approach to Microanalytical Simulation Models at the Community Level.- 8.1 Modeling the Barker community of Midwest.- 8.1.1 Modeling strategies.- 8.1.2 Data sources.- 8.2 Structural and causal hypotheses.- 8.2.1 Theory of manning.- 8.2.2 Behavior setting operation.- 8.2.3 Prototype settings.- 8.2.4 Causal relationships.- 8.3 Concluding comments.- 9. Some Broader Implications of Behavior Settings for the Social Sciences.- 9.1 Distinctive features of the behavior setting concept.- 9.2 Some relationships of behavior settings and eco-behavioral science to established disciplines.- 9.3 Barker on the need for an eco-behavioral science, 1969.- 9.4 Barker’s mature view of an eco-behavioral science, 1977.- 9.5 The relation between objective and subjective social indicators: Barker’s behavior settings and Lewin’s life space?.- 9.6 Potential uses of behavior setting concepts by social and economic historians.- 9.7 Potential uses of behavior setting concepts in social and economic development planning.- 9.8 Potential uses of behavior setting concepts in reconstructing and reinterpreting earlier community surveys.- 9.9 Uses of behavior setting concepts in various fields of mathematical social science.- 10. Social System Accounts Based on Behavior Settings: Some Next Steps.- 10.1 What would a system of social accounts based on behavior settings include?.- 10.2 Listing and classifying the outputs of a social system.- 10.3 Input-output relationships and social policies.- 10.4 Pseudo-prices, exchange rates, or ‘barter terms of trade’ between pairs of social system outputs.- 10.5 Possibilities for experimentation with social system accounts and models based on behavior settings by international agencies, by local governments, and by market and nonmarket organizations.- 10.6 Roger Barker’s contribution to social science: an appraisal and a dedication.- References.- Appendix I. Behavior Settings, Ecological Psychology, and Eco-Behavioral Science: Some Annotated References to the Basic Literature.- Appendix II. Selected Publications and Unpublished Manuscripts by Karl A. Fox and Associates Making Use of Behavior Setting Concepts.- Author Index.