CHAPTER XX SOCIAL DISABILITIES AND THE QUESTIONNAIRE PLAN OF PRESENTATION W HEN the case worker has gone only a short distance in his preliminary inquiries, or sometimes at a later period, he discovers a certain disability or a combination of disabilities. What are the implications of his discovery? How should it modify his method? By what means can a large number of possible modifications be indicated and made. accessible for reference when needed? This, next to the discussion of evidence, has been the most difficult problem with which the present study has had to deal. Our discussion of the methods and points of view common to all social diagnosis is ended, but there remains to be treated this baffling topic of the variations in method demanded by different tasks and by the presence of different disabilities. I. OBJECTS OF THE QUESTIONNAIRES 1. Their Dangers. In determining to present in questionnaire form most of the material gathered for this final division of the subject, the writer is aware that the device is clumsy and that it has its dangers. The purposes and limitations of these questionnaires are bound to be misunderstood by some who attempt to use them, no matter how clearly it is set forth that none are sets of questions to be asked of clients and that none are schedules the answers to which are to be filled in by anyone. They are merely long lists of queries which, when gone over by the social case worker with a particular case in mind, may bring to his attention, out of the many presented, a possible four or five that may contain suggestive leads. Leading questions are dangerous things, as already indicated; the questioner, ignorant of the true answer, suggests one nevertheless to the person who is being questioned. Here the case worker is asking himself questions. He is merely doing more formally, in fact, what he is forced to do all the time, for social diagnosis moves forward by calling up before the mind one possible explanation after another, one alternative after another, before putting each to the test. It is in the suggestion of alternative situations and explanations that these questionnaires will, it is hoped, prove of some help. Their very extent and elaboration should make it evident that no one of them could apply in its entirety to any one client or any one family. But it may be added that they have no significance and will seem only a confused mass of detail unless they are examined with a particular case in mind. In a case in which the first interview has been held and certain data have been gathered elsewhere, the choice of questionnaires to be examined should not be difficult. The preliminary questionnaire regarding Any Family takes precedence (if there is a family) of the questionnaires covering the particular disability or disabilities. 2. Their Use Illustrated. Thus, the Angelinos are a family, and that fact may justify taking the time to read over the first questionnaire in order to be sure that no important point which seems to bear upon their present difficulties has been omitted. Many of the questions are disposed of at once as not applying, as applying but unimportant, or as already followed up, but a few of those which remain may raise a doubt of the course that the inquiry has taken so far and suggest another way. The Angelinos are not just a family, however, they are a family recently arrived in this country. What does that fact suggest with regard to their background and foreground? The Immigrant Family Questionnaire is necessarily general, but it may yield a few ideas. The oldest girl is blind and has had no care. Unless the case worker knows just where to turn for guidance in dealing with this disability on its social side, Miss Lucy Wright's carefully framed questions, as given in Chapter XXV, may have something to teach him. A good deal later Angelino leaves home without giving any clue to his destination, or so his wife says. Possibly the Deserted Family Questionnaire may throw some light on the first steps to be taken. Neither in this case nor in any other, however, are these questionnaires to be heavily leaned upon. Anyone who has had the patience to follow the earlier discussions of this book will realize that it does not put forward the treatment of separate disabilities as the whole of social case work by any means. The Angelinos are not just an immigrant family or a deserted family, and the case worker who knows them as well as their disabilities is the one who will have most success in the diagnosis and treatment of their social situation. II. WHAT IS TRUE OF EVERYBODY? Requests often came to us, in gathering our material, for a good, comprehensive outline of the ground that should be covered in any social diagnosis whatsoever. No single question of the outline thus asked for was to be unimportant, and all were to apply quite universally to human situations. This was, in effect, a demand for a short cut, and there are no short cuts in diagnosis. Between a clear conception of the things that are true of everybody and an equally clear conception of the things that are true of that complex of human relations and experiences represented by an individual client, anything might be important, and there are few things that might not become in certain circumstances unimportant. Studies yet to be made will undoubtedly give case work a more solid basis of formulated and applicable experience, but such studies, if they are to be of value, cannot begin with uniform schedules, filled out by different agencies and workers-each with a different notion of what social evidence means or with none at all. When answers obtained in this way are added together to make a total, the result is meaningless. A more fruitful method of case work study, and one adaptations of which will probably be tried in the near future with different groups of cases, is that already illustrated by Dr. Healy's Individual Delinquent and by Dr. Cabot's Differential Diagnosis. The former gives the results of diagnosis and treatment in 1000 cases of juvenile delinquency selected on the basis of "repetition of offense plus sufficiency of data"; the latter classifies 383 case histories of disease by what its author calls their "presenting symptom"-by the one, that is, of which the patient was most acutely aware when he asked medical aid, such as a backache, a chill, a headache, etc. "Cases do not |