Advocacy Research and Social Policy

Advocacy research-empirical investigations of social problems by people who are deeply concerned about those problems-has a long and honorable history, exemplified by the considerable influence of Michael Harrington's The Other America on federal antipoverty policies in the 1960s. Often, however, perhaps for understandable psychological reasons, advocacy has taken precedence to research, and results have been exaggerated or magnified. Claims in the 1980s, later irrefutably debunked, that 50,000 children are kidnapped each year by strangers, are one example. Other recent examples include wildly inflated estimates of the incidence of abuse of the elderly, sexual abuse of children, and rape. Exaggerated claims are eventually exposed but, when they deal with highly emotional subjects, can for a time powerfully shape media coverage and social policy. The trick-easier to say than do, but Harrington did it-is to be cautious and modest in making empirical claims and passionate and personal in expressing policy views.