This exploratory study was directed at an examination of role perceptions among four groups of subjects, two white and two black. The black samples are composed of adult hardcore unemployed men and adolescent boys in a special high school training program. One of the white samples also consisted of adolescents in the same program; the other was constituted from the subject pool of the University of Illinois and includes middle-class college girls. The study was undertaken with the expectation that some of the cross-cultural similarities observed in previous studies would be replicated, but also that much would be learned about the unique ways of role perception within subcultures of the United States. Role behaviors were elicited from members of the subject population by means of an open-ended questionnaire. Stimulus role pairs were obtained by random selection from a list of 27 stimulus persons used in previous research. Each subject was asked to write three behaviors which could occur between the two persons listed. A total of 21 such pairs was used. As in previous research elicitation, questionnaires were "decentered" by asking five black consultants to translate them into "Black English" and back again. The major advantage of the decentered version in standard English is that it contains mostly words that are familiar to ghetto blacks. (Author/JM)