Reflections on Reference Groups

With characteristic modesty Herbert Hyman has described his presidential address as “reflections.” Opinion researchers have learned to listen intently when he reflects out loud, for he has few equals in the range and profundity of his intellectual explorations. He delivered his address to the members of the American Association for Public Opinion Research and their guests at the Fifteenth Annual Conference on May 7, 1960, in the Traymore Hotel in Atlantic City. The Proceedings of the Conference over which he presided appear elsewhere in this issue.