Implications of Analog-to-Digital Technology for Social Sciences: A Review and Preview

In the past few years increasing attention has been given to the role of computer software in gathering, analyzing, and displaying social science data Data gathering software typically allows the user to enter such data as might be obtained through observation2 or survey research3 in addition to providing a way to have subjects directly enter responses.4 Data analysis software directly parallels its mainframe counterpart-users can construct data sets, &dquo;clean&dquo; data, and generate standard statistical reports. The advanced graphics capabilities of most microcomputers allow researchers to display information in a visually attractive and meaningful way. Yet hidden in the background has been a series of developments in the analog-to-digital (A/D) field that has been substantively ignored by social science researchers. The reasons are varied: (1) A/D technology is hardware oriented-most social scientists are barely recovering from the shock of learning new computer software lan-