Home Economics Research in the U.S. Department of Agriculture

1958

National Agricultural Library

PA Number 364

To put science to work for better everyday living is the assignment of the Institute of Home Economics, a small research agency which is a part of the Agricultural Research Service in the U. S. Department of Agriculture. The work is carried out in three Divisions — the Human Nutrition, the Clothing and Housing, and the Household Economics Research Divisions.

The task of this organization, in one sentence, is to develop through research new knowledge about efficient household management and ways to make best consumer use of food, fiber, and other products of the country's farms.

Three roads to progress are taken in carrying out the assignment:

1. More knowledge is sought about basic needs for food, housing, and other goods and services that figure in everyday living ... as guidelines for planning by the Nation's families.

2. More knowledge is sought about these goods and services . . . for increasingly effective use of the Nation's resources.

3. Statistical pictures are taken at intervals to show what families buy and use in everyday living ... to see how the Nation is advancing toward being better fed, housed, clothed.

The research is done in the interest of consumers, particularly homemakers, as other Government agencies aid the farmer, manufacturer, merchant, wage earner. Homemakers in the United States now number about 34,000,000. They are sometimes called the largest occupational group. The degree of their success in buying, and in managing time, energy, and goods has an important bearing on the kind of living that the Nation's families enjoy.

The home economics research staff numbers about 230 employees-Most of them are scientific specialists and their aids, working on the research projects selected for the current program.

Many are home economists, as you might expect, but most of them have an added major or minor in some specialty, such as nutrition, experimental cookery, chemistry, physics, bacteriology, textiles, housing, household equipment, economics, statistics. Specialization is necessary in research.

Besides home economists, the research staff includes men and women who are expertly trained and experienced as chemists, physicists, physiologists, bacteriologists, architects, statisticians.

When new employees are needed, they are obtained from civil-service lists of those who have qualified. The Civil Service Commission, Washington 25, D. C, is always willing to take names and notify applicants when examinations are to be given in their fields. Usually there's an examination for home economists each quarter. College seniors can take this examination, and thus may be on the civil-service list by the time they are graduated.

The Divisions are located partly in downtown Washington, D. C, and partly in Maryland, 16 miles away.

In Maryland, near Beltsville, are the experimental laboratories for work in food and nutrition, textiles and clothing, housing and house-hold equipment. The laboratories are housed in two colonial-style brick buildings in a research center maintained by the U. S. Department of Agriculture.

In Washington, in the Department's South Building, are the offices of the household economics staff, which gathers information by inter- viewing families in different parts of the country and does its analytical work at desks, typewriters, and calculating machines. Here also are the offices where food-composition data are compiled and summarized.

Other organizations take part in some of the research, either on a cooperative or contract basis. Such arrangements to speed progress are made with Federal and State agencies and also with non-governmental organizations, such as universities, having specialized personnel and facilities.

U.S. Department of Agriculture