This is the common plan.

Men say they want to know the facts of the missionary situation, any facts, all facts, indiscriminately, and they draw up a list of all the facts that they can think of and issue a _questionnaire_ which leaves the compiler of the answers in complete ignorance concerning the purpose of the questions.

Such heaps of information might be used anyhow if they were really complete; but in fact since they have not been designed for any definite use they are generally deficient for any definite use, and remain mere masses of information on which no true judgments can be based.

So far from revealing the missionary situation they obscure it.

We have, therefore, taken the risk of explaining why we want each piece of information, how we think it might be used, and have drawn our tables in such a form that it is actually seen at work.