Review of Murray Hausknecht, The Joiners: A Sociological Description of Voluntary Association Membership in the United States

Certain sociological problems are less likely than others to be studied through primary field research. Some deal with topics that do not seem important enough to warrant the expense of a full-scale field inquiry; others treat subjects about which most people believe the facts are known; some involve events and opinions in the past which cannot be measured among current populations. Under these and other circumstances a partial solution to the problem is sometimes provided by secondary analysis-the re-examination of data that were collected for another purpose in order to illuminate a new problem and test new hypotheses. The Joiners presents an excellent example of the kind of problem that sociologists can explore profitably through secondary analysis of past public opinion polls and social surveys.