U.S. Must Face Changing Woes, Pollster Argues

America's problems have changed and "we must face the facts and do something about then soon", Louis Harris, pollster and president of Louis Harris Associates, told an audience of 50 in the Lowell House Junior Common Room last night.

Harris defined the new areas of public concern as "interpersonal," citing statistics on the high incidence of such problems as material infidelity, alcoholism, juvenile delinquency, loneliness, and mental disturbances in the families of the adults he polled.

Harris said that in gathering such statistics he is often accused of invading the privacy of individuals, but "we're not interested in individuals, only in patterns, and we have an obligation to do exactly what we're doing so that we may learn to recognize the problems of the '60s and '70s."

In the discussion period that followed, Harris talked about his experiences in Democratic campaigns of the last ten years. He said that the bane of a pollster's existence is that "people have learned the right answers, and what they are willing to do, or how they intend to vote."