Institute student research assessed democratic potential through three-level interpretation

Evidence

The interpretation of the research material was carried out in three stages: establishing the subject’s willingness to take part in politics at all (political disposition [Habitus]); establishing the subject’s attitude to the democratic system (political tendency); and establishing the presence and character of ideological motifs (view of society). The method used was that of descriptive typology', as it was termed in the remarks on research technique. The classification of answers to individual questions, or to complexes of questions on individual themes treated as units, provided the basis for this typology. The questions, in turn, were drawn hypothetically from a prior understanding of the objective situation and from subjective reactions expected on the basis of socio-psychological mechanisms’. Greater exactness, in the usual sense, would be incommensurate to the phenomenon, in the authors’ view, and would lead to gross inaccuracies. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2348

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the three-stage interpretive framework (Habitus, tendency, view of society) and ‘descriptive typology’ used in the Frankfurt School’s student research.
• XREF: The three-stage framework echoes the authoritarian personality research methodology and anticipates later qualitative-interpretive social science in Germany. — connects to: The Institute’s democracy concept shifted from coded concession to radical measure — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2335; Socialist school reform ideals shaped the Psychological Institute’s research ethos — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 675