The urban neighborhood, long of interest to city planners and sociologists, has in recent years become of increasing concern to public policy-makers. This new concern has called attention to a large gap in the municipal policy-maker's information resources. Social scientists have employed a field method, participant-observation, that can potentially provide some of the types of information sought by the policy-maker. Four modifications of this method, intended to make this method more applicable to the needs of the policy-maker, are tested in this study: (1) several neighborhoods have to be studied simultaneously, using the same general research procedures; (2) more than one investigator should study the same area; an economic approach is to have a field worker operating primarily in one area, and secondarily in another; (3) the participant-observer's work can be designed to emphasize the quantification of observable events; and, (4) small-area data, whether available through the census, special surveys, or municipal records, can be used in close conjunction with the field work. To test these four modifications, a field study of seven New York City neighborhoods was designed, with seven participant-observers working in these neighborhoods for a three-month period (the summer of 1970). (Author/JM)