Paul F. Lazarsfeld combined his interests in mathematics, psychology, and sociology to become one of the most influential and innovative forces in quantitative social analysis during the twentieth century. He pioneered a broad range of methodological advancements noted for their quantitative and qualitative mixture of data analysis. Applying his research to the areas of mass communication, public opinion, voting behavior, and popular culture, Lazarsfeld combined the study of social units and individuals through the use of survey analysis and panel analysis with the goal of empirically determining the causation of action.
Lazarsfeld was born on February 13, 1901, in Vienna, Austria, to parents Robert and Sofie (Munk) Lazarsfeld. After receiving his doctorate degree in mathematics from the University of Vienna in 1924, he remained to serve as an instructor in mathematics for the next five years. In 1929 he turned his attention to social psychology, accepting a position as an instructor at the Psychological Institute of the University of Vienna and serving as the director of the Division of Applied Psychology. In 1931 he conducted a study of Marienthal, a small industrial town near Vienna with a high unemployment rate. Published in 1933 as Marienthal: The Sociography of an Unemployed Community , the study gives insight to Lazarsfeld's ability to combine quantitative and qualitative approaches. For example, he measured the walking speed of unemployed men, using the rate at which the village women traveled as a base line. From this, the study showed that over half of the unemployed men walked at a rate of less than two miles an hour whereas fewer than a quarter of the women did. In a typical trip across the village, only nine percent of the women made three or more stops compared to almost sixty percent of the men. By careful assessment of social conditions, life histories, family budgets, spending habits, and daily routines, Lazarsfeld transformed qualitative data into quantitative analysis.
In 1933 Lazarsfeld traveled to the United States on a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to study psychology. After beginning as an instructor of psychology at the Psychological Institute, in 1937 he accepted a position as director of the Rockefeller Foundation's Office of Radio Research and led studies on the influence of radio on society. In 1940 Lazarsfeld moved to New York City, joined the Sociology Department at Columbia University, and established himself as the director of the newly formed Columbia Bureau of Applied Social Research, which would become the prototype for social research institutes. In the 1940s he published several books concerning his radio studies, including Radio and the Printed Page: An Introduction to the Study of Radio and Its Role in the Communication of Ideas (1940), Radio Research, 1941 (1941; with Frank Stanton), and Radio Research, 1942-43 (1944).
By the mid-1940s, Lazarsfeld had begun to focus on voting patterns and behavior. He conducted two early landmark studies of presidential elections in 1940 and 1948. His conclusions on voting decisions were published as The People's Choice: How a Voter Makes Up His Mind in a Presidential Campaign (with Bernard Berelson and Hazel Gaudet; 1944) and Voting: A Study of Opinion Formation in a Presidential Campaign (1954). In an attempt to connect preexisting attitudes and expectations with voting behavior and monitor changing opinions throughout the course of an election season, Lazarsfeld located his studies in Erie County, Ohio, and Elmira, New York, in 1940 and 1948, respectively. Interviewing the same people up to seven times in the Erie study and up to four times in the Elmira study, Lazarsfeld created the survey method of panel analysis. Although electoral research would abandon Lazarsfeld's interest in a particular locale in favor of nationwide surveys, the panel design became standard practice in sophisticated voting studies.
Several important findings resulted from the two studies. First, Lazarsfeld found that people tended to vote as they, and their families, had voted in the past. Voting opinions are connected to influences found in membership in various social groups. More specifically, people with lower incomes, urbanites, and Catholics tended to vote for Democratic candidates, and people with substantial incomes, those living in rural areas, and Protestants were more apt to vote for the Republican ticket. Third, change is more likely to occur when cross pressures are present and when different group affiliations provide conflicting attitudes and opinions. Finally, Lazarsfeld developed the understanding of a "two-step flow of information." According to this theory, people are not highly influenced by the media but rather look to opinion leaders for advice and information. Not necessarily knowledgeable of the issues or candidates personally, the voters turn to respected members of similar social groups who stay updated on current affairs and relay both information and opinion to the voter.
Lazarsfeld gave up his duties as director of the Bureau of Applied Social Research in 1950 to chair Columbia University's sociology department. He was named Quetelet Professor of Social Science in 1963, a position he held until 1969. From 1970 until his death in 1976 he was a distinguished professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Throughout his career as a researcher and scholar, Lazarsfeld continued to expand his focus and widen his interests as reflected in the array of his published works, such as Continuities in Social Research (1950), Personal Influence: The Part Played by People in the Flow of Mass Communications (1955; with Elihu Katz), Mathematical Thinking in the Social Sciences (1954), The Academic Mind: Social Scientists in a Time of Crisis (1958; with Wagner Thielens, Jr.), Organizing Educational Research (1964; with Sam D. Sieber), and Latent Structure Analysis (1968; with Neil W. Henry).
On the force of his powerful personality, Lazarsfeld created new, sometimes controversial directions in applied social research. Criticized by some sociologists such as C. Wright Mills for reducing all qualitative data into mere numbers and statistics, he was admired by others who thought his work offered new and challenging directions in the social sciences. In the introduction to The Varied Sociology of Paul F. Lazarsfeld (1982; edited by Patricia Kendall), James S. Coleman, who calls Lazarsfeld the founder of modern mathematical sociology, writes: "Paul Lazarsfeld was one of those rare sociologists who shaped the direction of the discipline for the succeeding generation. It is this that gives the key to the fascination that Lazarsfeld's life and work holds for many sociologists, for they know... that had it not been for Lazarsfeld, they might have been pursuing quite different directions in sociology, and pursuing them in a different manner."
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