This document, the fourth in the final report on the Multi-Disciplinary Graduate Program in Educational Research, is a qualitative case study designed to show the form of sociological contributions to and the role of sociologists in policy formulation at an American Educational Research Association (AERA) colloquium. Discussions at the conference centered around (1) the reward system of the educational research field, (2) the communication system of the field, (3) the quality of research, and (4) the influence of the AERA in its field and on the principal outside agents affecting the field. In exchanges over the nature and effectiveness of the AERA in these subject areas, it was illustrated that sociology played a role in making recommendations to colleagues and policy makers and in making decisions on matters brought before the group by virtue of the social science conceptual framework brought to bear on the problems under consideration, the empirical studies conducted on the problems, and the presence of social scientists as planners and decision makers. (MB)