This is a study about perceptions of well-being. Its purpose is to investigate how these perceptions are organized in the minds of different groups of American adults, to find valid and efficient ways of measuring these percep tions, to suggest ways these measurement methods could be implemented to yield a series of social indicators, and to provide some initial readings on these indicators; i.e., some information about the levels of well-being perceived by Americans. The findings are based on data from more than five thousand Americans and include results from four separate representative samplings of the American population. One of the ways our research is unusual is that it includes a major methodological component. Typical surveys involve a modest effort at instru ment development, the application of the instrument to a group of respondents, and an analysis of the resulting data that mainly describes the people studied. Our work, however, was implemented in a series of sequential cycles, each of which consisted of conceptual development, instrument design, data collection, analysis, and interpretation. Ideas and findings generated in prior cycles affected the design of subsequent cycles.

Scientific research in the service of economic and social development is supported by most governments and many kinds of organizations, but decisions about the determination of priorities and the allocation of resources are always difficult. This volume, first published in 1979, contains a comprehensive and meticulous study of the factors, human as well as material, related to scientists' effectiveness in meeting research goals. An international research team, co-ordinated by Unesco, surveyed members of more than 1,200 different research groups working in a variety of disciplines in universities, government and private research institutes and industry. Systematic samples from six European countries - Austria, Belgium, Finland, Hungary, Poland and Sweden - are represented in the data. The authors' innovative conceptual approaches and techniques will be of great interest to organizational psychologists and sociologists; their substantive findings, which challenge conventional wisdom about strategies for maximizing scientific productivity, will have important implications for all those concerned with science policy planning.