182 Personality
landmark study, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America,
which was based on letters and autobiographical material.
Promoting the use of empirical methods, the study served as
a model for sociologists at the University of Chicago, the
most influential institution in sociology in the 1920s and
1930s (Bulmer, 1984). Following Thomas’s departure from
Chicago in 1918, other prominent members of the sociology
department, including Robert E. Park, Ernest W. Burgess,
Clifford R. Shaw, and Herbert Blumer, continued to promote
case studies and life histories (Bulmer, 1984), extending
their influence through the Social Science Research Council
(SSRC); we discuss these developments in a later section.
Examples of works by Chicago sociologists include Shaw’s
(1930)The Jack-Roller: A Delinquent Boy’s Own Storyand
Krueger’s (1925) dissertation on autobiographical docu-
ments and personality.
A debate concerning the relative merits of case study and
statistical methods during this period reflected sociologists’
growing interest in quantitative methods, partly a result of
their collaboration with researchers in neighboring disci-
plines, such as economics and psychology. Psychologist L. L.
Thurstone, for example, was an important influence on such
sociologists as Samuel Stouffer (1930), who became a propo-
nent of statistical methods in sociology (Bulmer, 1984). The
debate was a frequent topic of meetings of the Society for So-
cial Research, an “integral part” of the Chicago sociology de-
partment composed of faculty and graduate students engaged
in serious research (p. 114). Although Chicago sociologists
were at the center of the debate, those at other institutions
also participated (see, e.g., Bain, 1929; Lundberg, 1926).
According to Platt, the debate was a “hot” issue from the
1920s until the Second World War (1996, p. 36; see also
Ross, 1991). During the 1930s, members of the Chicago so-
ciology department demonstrated their allegiance to one
method or the other at their student-faculty picnic, “where
baseball sides were picked on the basis of case study versus
statistics” (Platt, 1996, pp. 45–46). Bulmer (1984) notes,
however, that an “emphasis on the complementarity of
research methods was characteristic of the Chicago school”
(p. 121) and that several participants in the debate actually
advocated the use of both approaches. During this period
many sociologists hoped to discover general laws by com-
paring and classifying individual cases, and this view eventu-
ally contributed to a blurring of the distinction between case
study and statistical methods (Platt, 1992). Burgess (1927)
compared sociologists’ increasing interest in quantitative
methods with psychologists’ “heroic efforts to become
more scientific, that is to say, statistical” (p. 108); in contrast,
he noted that social workers and psychiatrists had introduced
the case study method into social science.
Sociologists’ use of case studies was derived in part from
the close connection between sociology and social work:Sociology and social work took a long time to become disentan-
gled; in the 1920s people called social workers were equally or
even more likely to carry out empirical research, and university
sociologists very frequently drew on their case data whether or
not it had been collected for research purposes. (Platt, 1996,
p. 46)Social workers’ interest in personality during this period is
illustrated by social work theorist Mary Richmond’s insis-
tence that the “one central idea” of social casework was “the
development of personality” (1922, p. 90). Richmond and
other social workers (e.g., Sheffield, 1920) wrote influential
works on case study methods.
In the sociological literature of this period, the term “case
study” referred not only to the number of cases and the inten-
siveness with which they were studied but also to a “special
kind” of data (Platt, 1996, p. 46). “Case study” was often
used interchangeably with “life history” and “personal docu-
ments”; these methods were seen as giving “access to the
subjects’ personal meanings, while alternatives [were] seen
as dry, narrow and giving access only to external data”
(p. 46). Exemplifying this usage, sociologist John Dollard
applied his Criteria for the Life History(1935) to several
different types of “life history,” defined as “an autobiography,
biography or clinical history” or “even a social service case
history or a psychiatric document” (p. 265). Dollard’s work
also reflected sociologists’ interest in refining and standardiz-
ing case methods.The Mental Hygiene MovementInspired by a case study—the autobiography of a former
patient (Beers, 1908)—the mental hygiene movement was
organized in 1909 to reform the treatment of patients in men-
tal institutions. The movement soon became a powerful
coalition of psychiatrists, educators, and social workers who
attributed various social and personal problems to individual
maladjustment (see Cohen, 1983; Danziger, 1990, 1997;
Lubove, 1965; Parker, 1991). Expanding their goals to in-
clude the identification of potential cases of maladjustment,
mental hygiene workers made “personality” the focus of their
preventive and therapeutic efforts, which frequently involved
interdisciplinary teams of experts undertaking intensive case
studies of “troublesome” children in settings such as child
guidance clinics (W. Healy, 1915; Jones, 1999). Psychiatrists
typically screened clients for medical disorders and con-
ducted psychotherapy, and social workers contributed case