Empirical attitudinal surveys cannot reveal revolutionary prospects.

Evidence

Would a social-psychological analysis of those who took part in the Russian Revolution or in the Munich or Hungarian Soviet Republics, for example, have shown that most of those involved were in favour of raising their children without corporal punishment, that they were in favour of married women having jobs, or that they held other views which proved that their attitudes were deeply anti-authoritarian? The fact that such questions spring to mind at once shows how absurd the idea was that an empirical research project, no matter how sophisticated, would be able to reveal the prospects for revolution. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 230

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 230
• XREF: connects to: Empirical social-psychological research cannot reveal revolutionary prospects in the working class — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 230; Even best-effort surveys cannot verify respondents’ truthfulness — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 2213; Survey research is vulnerable to systematic measurement errors that skew results (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Empirical social-psychological research cannot reveal revolutionary prospects in the working class #contradicts (0.98) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 230
• Even best-effort surveys cannot verify respondents’ truthfulness #qualifies (0.75) — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 2213
• Survey research is vulnerable to systematic measurement errors that skew results #expands (0.75)
• Open-ended survey questions distort ideological meaning among less educated respondents. #expands (0.75)
• Aggregate time-series polling data cannot reveal how scandal affects individual citizens’ thinking #qualifies (0.72)
• Mechanical causality cannot account for qualitative change or historical novelty. #corroborates (0.72)