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

Converse, Jean M.

ISBN 10: 0520053990 / ISBN 13: 9780520053991

Published by University of California Press, 1987

About this Item

Pages intact with minimal writing/highlighting. The binding may be loose and creased. Dust jackets/supplements are not included. Stock photo provided. Product includes identifying sticker. Better World Books: Buy Books. Do Good.

Seller Inventory # 4771348-6

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Survey Research in the United States : Roots and Emergence, 1890-1960
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication Date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520053990
• ISBN 13: 9780520053991
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 0th Edition.
• Condition: Good
• Weight: 2.363 pounds

About this title

Synopsis

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.

About the Author

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.

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.