This paper summarizes the development of a new approach to survey research in black urban communities, in part by adapting standard techniques. Attention is directed at a group of salient assumptions underlying social science investigations, namely: (1) the universality of majority culture models of attitude structure; (2) sociolinguistic and linguistic styles in black communities; (3) the utility of majority culture cognitive frameworks to understanding black attitudes toward sensitive topics; and, (3) the adequacy of traditional survey research procedures to garner valid samples in urban black communities. Research pursued during summer 1975 involved eliciting a domain of thoughts about television in open-ended interviews with a cross-section of black respondents, refining that to a number of categories, and construction of an attitude scale reflecting those categories. Experienced black interviewers approached black residents of San Jose, East Palo Alto, San Francisco, and Oakland, California, in a variety of settings to ensure a mix of relevant and "irrelevant" factors. The interviewers attempted to structure the intercept as a conversation, so that the black respondents would feel free to utilize a similar communication style. The emphasis was on generating as much information about the cognitive categories people utilize to think about television as possible. (Author/JM)