In this Items archive piece from 1964, Sidney Verba reports on a conference organized by the SSRC’s Committee on Comparative Politics that addressed how survey research methods can help understand political change in the developing world—what was then referred to as “political modernization.” The conference considered the use of survey research in comparative studies, how to expand survey research by focusing on subgroups within nation states, and potential methodological and organizational problems.

In an effort to better understand the application of digital computers in the social sciences, particularly psychology, the SSRC’s Committee on the Simulation of Cognitive Processes, working alongside the RAND Corporation, convened a summer training institute to gauge this new technology’s application by a select group of social scientists. Written by the institute’s codirectors, Herbert A. Simon and Allen Newell, this 1958 archive report details the activities, particularly the programming of cognitive simulations, of the three-week event, and concludes with steps to further disseminate simulation techniques and expand the field.

The end of World War II and the start of the Cold War placed the United States in a new geopolitical and military position in the world. To better understand the policy implications of this new role’s effect on the public, the SSRC convened the Committee on Civil-Military Relations Research in 1952. Here, Gordon A. Craig and Bryce Wood describe the committee’s findings as of 1954, emphasizing the lack of history on US military policy and introducing a new grants program to expand historical and social science research on the topic.