Editing Margaret Mead (section)

===Other research areas===
In 1926, there was much debate about [[race and intelligence]]. Mead felt the methodologies involved in the experimental psychology research supporting arguments of racial superiority in intelligence were substantially flawed. In "The Methodology of Racial Testing: Its Significance for Sociology," Mead proposes that there are three problems with testing for racial differences in intelligence. First, there are concerns with the ability to validly equate one's test score with what Mead refers to as ''racial admixture'' or how much ''Negro or Indian blood'' an individual possesses. She also considers whether that information is relevant when interpreting IQ scores. Mead remarks that a genealogical method could be considered valid if it could be "subjected to extensive verification." In addition, the experiment would need a steady control group to establish whether racial admixture was actually affecting intelligence scores. Next, Mead argues that it is difficult to measure the effect that social status has on the results of a person's intelligence test. She meant that environment (family structure, socioeconomic status, and exposure to language, etc.) has too much influence on an individual to attribute inferior scores solely to a physical characteristic such as race. Then, Mead adds that language barriers sometimes create the biggest problem of all. Similarly, Stephen J. Gould finds three main problems with intelligence testing in his 1981 book ''[[The Mismeasure of Man]]'' that relate to Mead's view of the problem of determining whether there are racial differences in intelligence.<ref>Mead, Margaret, "The Methodology of Racial Testing: Its Significance for Sociology" ''American Journal of Sociology'' 31, no. 5 (March 1926): 657–667.</ref><ref>Gould, Stephen J. ''The Mismeasure of Man'', New York City: W. W. Norton & Company, 1981.</ref>

In 1929, Mead and Fortune visited [[Manus Island|Manus]], now the northernmost province of Papua New Guinea, and traveled there by boat from [[Rabaul]]. She amply describes her stay there in her autobiography, and it is mentioned in her 1984 biography by [[Jane Howard (journalist)|Jane Howard]].  On Manus, she studied the Manus people of the south coast village of Peri. "Over the next five decades Mead would come back oftener to Peri than to any other field site of her career.'<ref name="Howard" /><ref> [[Jane Howard (journalist)|Jane Howard]], ''Margaret Mead: A Life'' (1984), New York: Simon and Schuster.</ref>{{rp|117}}

Mead has been credited with persuading the [[American Jewish Committee]] to sponsor a project to study European Jewish villages, ''[[shtetl]]s'', in which a team of researchers would conduct mass interviews with Jewish immigrants living in New York City. The resulting book, widely cited for decades, allegedly created the [[Jewish mother stereotype]], a mother intensely loving but controlling to the point of smothering and engendering guilt in her children through the suffering she professed to undertake for their sakes.<ref>"[http://www.slate.com/id/2167961/slideshow/2167764/entry/2167761/fs/0/ The Jewish Mother] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110821014159/http://www.slate.com/id/2167961/slideshow/2167764/entry/2167761/fs/0/ |date=August 21, 2011 }}", ''Slate'', June 13, 2007, p. 3</ref>

Mead worked for the [[RAND Corporation]], a US Air Force military-funded private research organization, from 1948 to 1950 to study Russian culture and attitudes toward authority.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/margaretmeadmaki0000lutk |url-access=registration |page=[https://archive.org/details/margaretmeadmaki0000lutk/page/321 321] |quote=margaret mead RAND corporation. |title=Margaret Mead: The Making of an American Icon|publisher=Princeton University Press |author= Nancy Lutkehaus|isbn=978-0-691-00941-4|year=2008}}</ref>
[[File:Trance and Dance in Bali.webm|thumb|thumbtime=34|''[[Trance and Dance in Bali]]'', a 1951 documentary by [[Gregory Bateson]] and Margaret Mead]]
As an [[Anglican]] Christian, Mead played a considerable part in the drafting of the 1979 American [[Episcopal Church (United States)|Episcopal]] [[Book of Common Prayer]].<ref name="Howard"/>{{rp|347–348}}