Biographical Memoirs Volume 56 (1987) / Chapter Skim
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Paul F. Lazarsfeld
Paul F. Lazarsfeld
Pages 250-283
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From page 251... ...
Lazarsfeld: A Selected Bibliography," in Qualitative and Quantitative Social Research: Poems in Honor of Paul F Lazarsfeld, ed.
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From page 252... ...
Barton notes that the concept of the university-basect social research institute "was born in the mind of a social activist student in the intellectual hothouse of Vienna between the wars," who "created a penniless research center in a near bankrupt society, and found his friends jobs studying unemployment." He calls Lazarsfeld "an intellectual Oclysseus" and "an entrepreneur of intellectual conglomerates," who "brought new meaning to the words 'non-profit' as he used one cleficit-riciclen project to support another, and pyramided his intellectual assets from grant to grant." In the end, Barton notes, "the Bureau was demolished and hauled away include: Allen H Barton, "Paul Lazarsfeld and the Invention of the University Institute for Applied Social Research," in Organizing for Social Research, ed.
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From page 253... ...
9 Barton, "Paul Lazarsfeld and the Invention of the University Institute," pp. 17 3 Bernard Bailyn, "Recollections of PFL," in Merton, Coleman, and Rossi, Qualitative and Quantitative Social Research, p.
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From page 254... ...
Kenciall all his students, all his coworkers, and all accomplished social scientists. His daughter Lotte Bailyn is a social psychologist, his son Robert a mathematician.
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From page 255... ...
He was arrested for taking part in a courtroom demonstration when Actler was convicted. He was active as a leacler in socialist student organizations; he created a monthly newspaper for socialist students; and he helped found a political cabaret that was to play a seminal role in the clevelopment of both the political anc!
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From page 256... ...
The Forschungsstelle's most ambitious project was a study of Marienthal, a one-inclustry Austrian village twenty-four kilometers southeast of Vienna where the labor force was nearly all unemployed as a result of the severe economic depression in the years after World War I The study was directed by Marie Rhoda, LazarsfelcI, and Hans Zeisel.
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From page 257... ...
In 1979, a group of young Europeans undertook a restudy of the vilIage.6 6 See Birgit Flos, Michael Freund, and Janos Marton, "Marienthal 1930-1980," Journal fur Sozialforschung, 23(1) :136-49; and Michael Freund, Birgit Flos, and Janos Marton, "The Scars of Unemployment from the 1930s Are Still Visible," Aust~ia Todays, 4(1982)
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In 1937 the Rockefeller Foundation granted funds to Haclley Cantril, a Princeton psychologist, for a lar~e-scale study of the social effects of radio. on tne recommendation of Robert Lyncl, Lazarsfeld was cho
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radio research project virtually created the fielcl of mass communications research. It asked why messages are introclucec!
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But it survived for forty years, generally amidst administrative chaos, and with conspicuously little financial support from the university. The research ideas it fostered, the leacling social scientists who were trained there, the innovative research it sheIterect, and its distinctive organizational structure have greatly influencecl the institutionalization of the social sciences throughout the worId.7 Lazarsfelc!
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From page 261... ...
not spring from a grand clesign, but were largely the results of historical accidents and opportunities seized. By his own accounts, LazarsfelcI stuctiecI the effects of unemployment in an Austrian village in the early 1930s because the Social Democratic leacler Otto Bauer tract ricliculect his plan to stucly leisure cluring a severe economic depression.
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From page 262... ...
by the multivariate analysis of responses developed ways to measure the impact of radio on attitudes. This transformation of the opinion poll into multifacetecI survey research constitutes one of Lazarsfeld's major accomplishments.
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From page 263... ...
Much of his research, as well as the work of his students, concerned the codification of motives and conditions underlying people's behavior-a research procedure that came to be known as "reason analysis." At the heart of the procedure is the development of what is called an "accounting scheme"-a mode! of the action being studied that incorporates the dimensions of the act that guide the collection of empirical data.
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From page 264... ...
Examples of the application of reason analysis to such topics as consumer choice, changes in voting intentions, choosing or not choosing trial by jury, choosing an occupation, getting married or divorced, going to a psychiatrist, joining a voluntary association, moving from one house to another, and not practicing contraception are given in (Charles Kadushin, "Reason Analysis," in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, vol.
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From page 265... ...
He sought for many years to introduce improved mathematical methods into the social sciences with efforts such as his work in latent structure analysis and in dichotomous algebra. His own work was primarily in mathematical psychology, because he sought to mocle!
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~ His interest in the topic made him into something of a reverse missionary during the last fifteen years of his life: he attempted to convince Europeans that American style empirical social research had been strongly influenced by an earlier European empirical tradition. He was primarily responsible for or exerted]
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As his associate Morris Rosenberg once noted, "his most obvious impact is upon his students and, of course, on his students' students. When you read Pete Rossi, You read Paul; when YOU react Jim Coleman, you react Paul; , when you read Charlie GIock, you react Paul; and so on and on." ~2 Major Associates.
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From page 268... ...
Lazarsfelct and Stouffer first met in 1936. At that meeting, they agreed to colIaborate on a monograph concerning the American family in the depression that was a part of a Social Science Research Council inquiry into the era directed by Stouffer (Stouffer and Lazarsfelcl 19374.
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From page 269... ...
During the war years, when Lazarsfeld was a consultant to the War Department, his icleas on latent structure analysis and on the causal analysis of survey data were worked out in discussions with Stouffer. Their personal and research styles were totally different: Lazarsfeld was the somewhat flamboyant, cultured European, raised as a socialist; Stouffer was the homespun, modest Midwesterner, raised as (and remaining)
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From page 270... ...
, a brilliant attempt to enrich social theory by reappraising the wider effects of the series of attitude surveys that Stouffer had concluctect among soldiers during the war. Their three coauthored articles on mass communications deal with the social and cultural meanings of the radio research they hac]
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From page 271... ...
Lazarsfeld hacT no opportunity to create a personal library during his first clecade in the United States; when he first saw Merton's eclectic library, he resolved to clevelop his own, anct click. In his article in the Merton Festschrift, "Working with Merton," Lazarsfelct provicled a detailed recollection of their relationship; in the Lazarsfeld Festschrift, Merton refers to Lazarsfelc!
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for the generation of advertising and market researchers that matured in New York City in the decades following World War II. His work in communications research helpecl create it as a field of scholarship, and through his analyses of propaganda during World War I!
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for causal analysis helpecI transform opinion polling into a scientific method, anct his development and use of the pane} method has enormously influenced a wicle range of evaluations of the effect of educational or social reform programs. Marginality.
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his early studies of raclio to build bridges between the social sciences and such fields as literary analysis and music. He sought to relate the philosophy of science and empirical social research, historical analysis anct opinion research, and logic and concept for
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From page 275... ...
The convergence in the social sciences that Lazarsfeld tried hardest to effect is that between quantitative and qualitative research. In almost every field in which he worked, he tried to fuse these two productive modes of inquiry: it was the theme with which he ended his presidential address to the American Sociological Association; the journal Quality and Quantity was founded in 1967 under his direct influence; and for all these reasons the Festschrift in his memory is en
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From page 276... ...
Merton, Paul M Neurath, and Hans Zeisel.
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From page 277... ...
Die Arbeitslosen von Marienthal: Fin Soziographischer Versuch uber die Wirkungen langdauernder Arbeitslosigkeit. Leipzig: Hirzel.
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1954 Ed. Mathematical Thinking in the Social Sciences, New York: Free Press.
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With Wagner Thielens, Jr The Academic Mind: Social Scientists in a Time of Crisis. New York: Free Press.
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In: Qualitative Analysis: Historical and Critical Essays, pp.
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Latent Structure Analysis. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
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From page 282... ...
282 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS Between Individual and Collective Properties" t1961, with Herbert Menzel] ; "Some Functions of Qualitative Analysis in Social Research" ~1955, with Allen H
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