First developed as a tool for the Cross-Cultural Survey, an organization established in 1937 by the Institute of Human Relations at Yale University, this topical outline serves as the key to the assembling and classification in the files of the basic information on a sample of the peoples of the earth. With the ultimate objective of organizing in readily accessible form the available data on a statistically representative sample of all known cultures--primitive, historical, and contemporary--for the purpose of testing cross-cultural generalizations, the outline uniformly classifies material according to seven basic criteria among 79 major divisions of cultural background information. They include: (1) patterned activity, (2) circumstance, (3) subject, (4) object, (5) means, (6) purpose, and (7) result. The actual materials, meant to be used by those concerned with human behavior in broad perspective, are available on microfilm at a number of educational institutions as well as at Yale in the original files. An index of cultural terms is provided. For a companion document see FL 002 033. (RL)