APPENDIX B QUESTION LIST ON POLITICAL PRACTICES

This question list refers directly to the organized political life of the subject. Questions which are designed to elicit preferences are not included. For general personality questions and trait lists, the usual sources may be consulted for suggestions.⁠[85]

The question list here must, of course, be modified if used orally or with naïve subjects. An effort is always to be made to elicit specific incidents which arise in the mind. “Reminiscences” and not theories about the self are desired.

1. List the various associations and organizations of which you have been a member and in which you enjoyed rights which were approximately equal to those exercised by everyone else. Specify in each case whether you were almost inactive, moderately active, quite active. State when you became a member and how your subsequent activity fluctuated. Give dates when possible. Remember that you have been a member of various democratically organized political units. Mention also the prep-school class organizations, school and college organizations, alumni associations, profession organizations, civic associations, parties, and elective public offices. Organizations which were autocratically organized (that is, which exercised authority over those who had no formal right to choose the officials) should not be included. Do not omit associations of war veterans, Daughters or Sons of the Revolution, pacifists, anarchists, reform agitators, constitutional defense leagues, etc.

2. List the various organizations with which you have been associated either as one in autocratic authority or as one subject to autocratic authority. This should include schools which you have attended, appointive offices in the government, most business connections, trusteeships, etc.

3. List your various free-lance activities which have involved scarcely any organization but which have been a source of income. Partnerships which have involved practically no staff, private secretaryships, and such are meant to be listed here.

The following questions are intended to bring out the salient facts in connection with your relationship to each democratically organized and autocratically organized association or institution with which you were affiliated. Answer for each organization which you have listed in so far as applicable.

4. Just how did you become a member of this organization? What steps did you take? Who helped you? Why were you taken in? If you organized this body, why did you do it? When did you first entertain the idea? How did your plans develop? What assistance did you get and by what means? What was your reputation inside the organization when you first came in? Were you, for instance, ignored or regarded as promising or accepted and given responsibility immediately?

5. What friends or enemies did you have inside the organization when you first came into it?

6. To what offices or positions of authority in the organization were you elected or appointed?

7. In each case explain how it came about. When did you first entertain the idea that selection was possible? How much did you hesitate and ponder before deciding to try for the position or before accepting it if it was thrust upon you? What alternatives did you consider? With whom did you talk over the matter? What was urged on you? What were the disadvantages which deterred you or the advantages which lured you? Just what did you do to get the office or position? Who were your chief aids? Who were your chief competitors? What were the points in your favor and in favor of the others? How did the various cliques, groups, and other components of the organization line up? Sketch your strategy and practices in dealing with each one before selection. Did any issues of policy figure and how?

8. What were the cases in which you ran or were considered at one stage or another for selection? Answer the questions as before for each instance.

9. What appointive power or influence did you exercise in office? Whom did you consult in making or influencing these appointments? To what extent did you consider competence? The rewarding of friends? The division or elimination of your opponents?

10. What objectives, if any, had you thought out when you assumed responsibility?

11. What were the chief issues on which you took a position? How did your influence make itself felt in each instance (in public speaking, interviewing, appointive pressure, etc.)? How did each major issue happen to emerge? How did you arrive at your position? Whom did you consult? What considerations were balanced on both sides of the question? To what extent did you make issues by interjecting specific proposals into the situation? How did you happen to do this? What were the elements in the organization which were lined up on either side of the question? What concessions did you make in order to achieve your ends? Do you regard your concessions as too cheaply bought as you look back upon them? What results did you secure which satisfy you?

12. During your tenure were there personal misunderstandings, quarrels, and hatreds between you and anybody? How did they come about? What did you do and what was the relation of what you did to what happened?

13. Were there personal misunderstandings, quarrels, and antipathies among others inside the organization which you were asked to settle or which you tried to settle? What did you do and what relation did it bear to what finally happened?

14. Were there personal misunderstandings, quarrels, and antipathies between members of your own organization and people in other organizations which you were asked to settle or which you tried to settle? What did you do and what relation did it bear to what finally happened?

15. Did your organization have any ill feelings as a body for other organizations or groups when you came into office? What did you do to inflame or reduce it? What effect? Why?

16. Did your organization have any friendly feelings as a body for other organizations or groups? What did you do to cement or to disrupt these relations? Why? With what effect on the course of events?

17. Did your organization develop any friendly or unfriendly relations with organizations or groups to which they had been previously indifferent during your term in office? What did you do that had anything to do with this result? Why?

18. Did your organization use physical, legal, or other forms of pressure upon any other organization or group during your term? What was your rôle in suggesting, supporting, directing, or obstructing the adoption of these tactics? Why? What resulted?

19. Did your organization use physical, legal, economic, or other forms of pressure upon any of its own members during your term? What was your rôle in suggesting, supporting, directing, or obstructing the adoption of these tactics? Why? With what effect?

20. By whom were you praised during and after your term of office for your record? How were you praised or recognized and honored and for what? Effect on you?

21. By whom were you adversely criticized during and after your term in office for your record? How were you censured and for what? Effect on you?

22. Were you re-elected or reappointed, promoted or demoted, after serving your term or before? Why?

23. How did you get along with your immediate superiors, collaborators, and assistants? To what extent did you manipulate them? What different tactics did you employ with each? What success?

24. What were your formal and ceremonial duties in the organization as an officer? Did you enjoy them?

25. How did you enjoy your other official activities?

26. As a non-official, or non-position-holding member of the organization, what did you enjoy about it? The ceremonies? The routine operations? The uncertain features?

27. As a member of the rank and file, what policies and activities did you initiate, support, or oppose? Why? How much did you do and to what effect? How did the elements of the organization line up? Were you usually in the minority or the majority? What elements were usually with you?

28. How did your reputation change during your years in the organizations?

29. What particular friends and enemies did you acquire?

30. As a member of the rank and file, did you have personal misunderstandings, quarrels, and hatreds between you and other members? Why? What did you do? Results?

31. Did you arbitrate any grievances or try to smooth them out? Success? Why?

32. What was your attitude toward other organizations or groups with which your organization either competed or had some relations? As a member of the rank and file, what did you do to change or intensify prevailing attitudes? Influence?

33. Did your organization use physical or other means of pressure against outside organizations and other members of your organization? As a member of the rank and file, what did you do and with what effect? Did you think your organization was the best of its kind?

34. Have you severed your connection or become inactive? Why?

35. If you are still active, what are your plans and hopes?

36. How did this particular organization touch the administrative, legislative, and judicial branches of the government? The political parties? How? What methods were used to bring pressure to bear? What was your part in them?

37. As you look back on your life in the organization do you think of practices which you indulged in or tolerated which you regard as perhaps questionable? Instances? Did you so regard them at the time? What would have happened if you had not indulged in them? Should an organization be run on a different basis now?

38. What effect did life in the organization have upon your activity in the politics of the community at large? Did you have impulses to express yourself publicly or privately upon matters which you felt it expedient to follow? Or were you driven to such expression and activity?

39. If you were to judge entirely in terms of your experience as a member of this organization, what would be your judgment of the honesty and efficiency of the public service and the party machine?

40. What political prejudices or philosophies were current among various elements inside the organization?

41. Think of various members of this organization who were rather typical. How did you act toward them when you met them? What topics of conversation, of anecdote, etc., did you indulge in? What activities in common were there?

42. Did you think that you were imposed upon by any members as you look back upon it now? Did you estimate some of them too highly? Who? Why?

43. Did you underestimate some? Who? Why?

44. Were you estimated too high or too low? By whom? Why?

45. What things apart from common dishonesty would have caused you to lose standing in the organization? What opinions and activities would have compromised you?

46. Did you risk loss of standing at any time by word or deed? Were you tempted to? Why did you refrain?

47. When you tried to add others to the organization, whom did you seek? What type of people, in general, were you interested in?

48. Did the organization live up to your ideal? Why?

49. Who were the most powerful ones in the organization at different periods? What were your relations with them? What did you do consciously to win them? Success? What did you do to antagonize them? How did they take it? What, in short, was the attitude of the leaders toward you?

50. Did you ever have a sense of frustration arising from your failure to participate in discussions of policy, either because you hesitated to express yourself or because you expressed yourself badly?

51. What is your matured judgment of the utility of this organization in society?

52. How did your organization connections help or hurt you socially or any other way?

53. How did your outside connections help or hurt you in the organization?

54. What, generally speaking, were your advantages and disadvantages with reference to securing and holding a prominent position in the organization?

55. In general, what place did this organization play in your life?

56. With respect to each one of your so-called free-lance or very personal activities, answer such questions as these: How did you happen to take it up? Upon what factors would your success and failure depend? What did you do to manage the persons upon whom success or failure depended? With what result? What reaction did your experience have upon your outlook upon political life generally?