Survey Research in the United States - 9781412808804

Hardly an American today escapes being polled or surveyedor sampled. In this illuminating history, Jean Converseshows how survey research came to be perhaps thesingle most important development in twentieth-centurysocial science. Everyone interested in survey methods andpublic opinion, including social scientists in many fi elds,will find this volume a major resource.

Converse traces the beginnings of survey researchin the practical worlds of politics and business, whereelite groups sought information so as to infl uence massdemocratic publics and markets. During the Depressionand World War II, the federal government played a majorrole in developing surveys on a national scale. In the 1940scertain key individuals with academic connections andexperience in polling, business, or government researchbrought surveys into academic life. By the 1960s, what wasinitially viewed with suspicion had achieved a measure ofscientific acceptance of survey research.

The author draws upon a wealth of material in archives,interviews, and published work to trace the origins ofthe early organizations (the Bureau of Applied SocialResearch, the National Opinion Research Center, and theSurvey Research Center of Michigan), and to capture theperspectives of front-line fi gures such as Paul Lazarsfeld,George Gallup, Elmo Roper, and Rensis Likert. She writeswith sensitivity and style, revealing how academic surveyresearch, along with its commercial and political cousins,came of age in the United States.

Jean M. Converse was the director of theDetroit Area Study at the University ofMichigan. She is the author of Conversationsat Random: Survey Research as InterviewersSee It and Survey Questions: Handcraftingthe Standardized Questionnaire.