MIT Pollsters Study Annex Views on Life

Human Relations workers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology want to know what a Radcliffe girl would do if she had an illegitimate child.

Twenty girls from Moors Hall took the Tech Human Relations Department Poll last night and 40 girls from Briggs and Barnard Halls took it last Thursday. The poll is designed to test the abilities of college girls to predict the reactions of other college girls.

Problems included what a girl should do if she is engaged to a boy overseas and falls in love with another at home; what she should do if she is about to go to Europe and her mother becomes ill; what she should do if she is about to have an illegitimate child.

Girls taking the poll were handed a questionnaire with ten problems and a list of possible answers to each one. Girls in Briggs Hall were asked to check the answers they thought a Boston University girl would make; girls in Barnard the answers they thought a Radcliffe girl would choose. In Moors, five girls were given the poll, and then 20 others who knew them were asked to choose the answers they thought those five girls would give.

The poll is part of a general survey form being undertaken by the Tech Human Relations Department on how much college girls really understand each other. Other schools polled so far include B.U., Simmons, and Wellesley.