hich characterizes the members of groups.
Not races merely but nationalities and classes have marks, manners, and
patterns of life by which we infallibly recognize and classify them.

Social problems may be conveniently classified with reference to these
three aspects of group life, that is to say, problems of (a)
organization and administration, (b) policy and polity (legislation),
and (c) human nature (culture).

a) Administrative problems are mainly practical and technical. Most
problems of government, of business and social welfare, are technical.
The investigations, i.e., social surveys, made in different parts of the
country by the Bureau of Municipal Research of New York City, are
studies of local administration made primarily for the purpose of
improving the efficiency of an existing administrative machine and its
personnel rather than of changing the policy or purpose of the
administration itself.

b) Problems of policy, in the sense in which that term is used here,
are political and legislative. Most social investigations in recent
years have been made in the interest of some legislative program or for
the purpose of creating a more intelligent public opinion in regard to
certain local problems. The social surveys conducted by the Sage
Foundation, as distinguished from those carried out by the New York
Bureau of Municipal Research, have been concerned with problems of
policy, i.e., with changing the character and policy of social
institutions rather than improving their efficiency. This distinction
between administration and policy is not always clear, but it is always
important. Attempts at reform usually begin with an effort to correct
administrative abuses, but eventually it turns out that reforms must go
deeper and change the character of the institutions themselves.

c) Problems of human nature are naturally fundamental to all other
social problems. Human nature, as we have begun to conceive it in recent
years, is largely a product of social intercourse; it is, therefore,
quite as much as society itself, a subject for sociological
investigation. Until recent years, what we are now calling the human
factor has been notoriously neglected in most social experiments. We
have been seeking to reform human nature while at the same time we
refused to reckon with it. It has been assumed that we could bring about
social changes by merely formulating our wishes, that is, by "arousing"
public opinion and formulat