CITATION MEASURES OF THE INFLUENCE OF ROBERT K. MERTON

With the breadth of Merton’s influence beyond sociology clearly confirmed, the focus of the study shifted to several questions about the nature of his influence. Have scientists outside of smiology used Merton’s work more for his empirical observations (findings) or for his concepts? What cognitive areas of his work are cited in the nonsocial sciences, and do these differ from the areas cited in the social sciences? Are the concepts for which Merton is cited distinctively Mertonian, or do they have a more general origin? To explore these questions, a content analysis was done on 35 social science and 49 natural science articles published between 1961-1977 to determine the nature of Merton’s work cited by authors in disciplines other than sociology. More naturalscience articles were examined because they are so far beyond the usual sphere of influence of a sociologist. The sample of journals was dictated by journal availability in local libraries rather than by statistical standards. Nevertheless, the articles were randomly selected within that constraint. It must be mentioned, however, that the content analysis employed here is far from the rigorous and systematic content analysis used by Cole 1 in his study of Merton’s citations within sociology. Rather, the content analysis that follows should be viewed as illustrative. TABLE t lwks at whether Merton was cited more frequently for concepts or for findings. A “Secondary Citations” category was included here for cases in which an author cited a Merton article for something that Merton,,himself,’cites or,quotes (e.g., W. I. Thomas or St. Augustine), Also included in this category are articles that cited Merton only in the bibliography, not in the text. It is worth repeating that none of the articles analyzed for content are from sociology journals as such. The Social Sciences category in this table (and in those that appear later) refers to social sciences other than sociology. From the data,in TABLE 1 we see that 63’%of the inspected citations in the natural sciences are for conceptual contributions while in the social sciences it is 33%. In both the natural and social sciences, then, at least two-thirds of the citations are for concepts rather than findings. This confirms the impression that Merton’s major contribution has been that of a theorist.