Discussed is the report on Dutch social & cultural life by the Social & Cultural Planning Commission. Ph. C. Stouthard (1) points out the sampling difficulties inherent in this kind of survey, (2) questions the use of factor analysis in generating a well-being index, (3) wonders why the hypothesis that changes originate in the city & spread to the countryside could not be tested, (4) notes that the reporting of analysis results obtained by loglinear transformations is not convincing, & (5) regrets that the results of the Automatic Interaction Detector analysis are not processed further. A. de Swaan points out that the content & organization of the report is geared to the needs of the state bureaucracy; there is a chapter on the penal system but none on the arts & sciences. Three general tendencies of the report are: focusing on large scale social phenomena rather than on important details, hiding behind tables & figures, & emphasizing aspects that have an immediate impact on policy making. L. A. Welters studies the development in the conception of the three reports published to date. It is noted that the reports attach progressively more importance to inter- rather than intrasector phenomena. This development does not merely result from new description methods but reflects a policy change. A. Orianne.
