Survey Research in the United States : Roots and Emergence 1890-1960

Hardly an American today escapes being polled or surveyed or sampled. In this illuminating history, Jean Converse shows how survey research came to be perhaps the single most important development in twentieth-century social science. Everyone interested in survey methods and public opinion, including social scientists in many fi elds, will find this volume a major resource. Converse traces the beginnings of survey research in the practical worlds of politics and business, where elite groups sought information so as to infl uence mass democratic publics and markets. During the Depression and World War II, the federal government played a major role in developing surveys on a national scale. In the 1940s certain key individuals with academic connections and experience in polling, business, or government research brought surveys into academic life. By the 1960s, what was initially viewed with suspicion had achieved a measure of scientific acceptance of survey research. The author draws upon a wealth of material in archives, interviews, and published work to trace the origins of the early organizations (the Bureau of Applied Social Research, the National Opinion Research Center, and the Survey Research Center of Michigan), and to capture the perspectives of front-line fi gures such as Paul Lazarsfeld, George Gallup, Elmo Roper, and Rensis Likert. She writes with sensitivity and style, revealing how academic survey research, along with its commercial and political cousins, came of age in the United States. Jean M. Converse was the director of the Detroit Area Study at the University of Michigan. She is the author of Conversations at Random: Survey Research as Interviewers See It and Survey Questions: Handcrafting the Standardized Questionnaire . Dedication Contents Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction to the Transaction Edition Introduction Part One: The Ancestors: 1890–1940 1. The Reformist Ancestor of Policy: The Social Survey 2. The More Elegant Ancestor of Science: Attitude Measurement in Psychology and Sociology 3. The Most Direct Line, Business: Market Research and Opinion Polling Part Two: The Prewar and Wartime Generation: 1935–1945 4. The Prewar Years: Academic Entrepreneurs and Survey/Poll Data 5. The Wartime Experience in Policy Research 6. The Wartime Experience in Science (I) 7. The Wartime Experience in Science (II) Part Three: Migrations to the Universities: 1940–1960 8. General Perspectives and Anticipations 9. The Bureau of Applied Social Research: The First Wave 10. The National Opinion Research Center: From the Margins of Commercial Polling 11. The Survey Research Center at Michigan: From the Margins of Government 12. The Academic Establishment of Survey Research: A Summary and Evaluation Notes Index