Relational data base procedures developed in computer science for constructing more efficient data bases are described and shown to be useful for concept formation in the social sciences. These procedures take advantage of dependencies among concepts to develop a com prehensive conceptual framework reflecting the natural structure of those concepts. That framework organizes concepts into the formal categories of entities, attributes, and relationships. These procedures, when examined in depth in a sociological application, are found to meet criteria for concepts advocated by Hempel and Blumer; to offer promising substantive insights; and to be compatible with established procedures for typology construction, facet analysis, and multidimensional scaling.
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