In tins view the role of educational research is to explain how the educational world works and to suggest action. Early work in this category is sometimes described as being in the 'political arithmetic' tradition of 'objective' methods of data collection and analysis used to inform political choices. Early social reformers in this tradition included Booth and Rowntree, who studied the nature and extent of poverty, as well as (later) Glass and Halsey, who studied social mobility and education