This book addresses the question of what it takes to develop social indicators that genuinely influence important public decisions. It looks historically at the processes of creating and using three important social indicators in the United States: unemployment rates, standard budgets, and crime rates. It then develops principles for choosing concepts, designing measures, and creating policy processes that institutionalize their use.

For this second edition, Innes has provided a major new introductory essay, which reflects on social indicators research and her own and...