7 - From Chicago back to Columbia

Summary

Stouffer was a student of Ogburn and during the 1930s worked with Lazarsfeld on various research projects before taking the lead in the massive American Soldier study during World War II in which ‘modern statistical sociology’ came of age. Lazarsfeld, after early social research in his native Austria, established the Office of Radio Research at Columbia and in 1941 was appointed Associate Professor in Sociology conjointly with Merton. The two then formed a close collaborative relationship. Both separately and together, Stouffer, Lazarsfeld and Merton significantly advanced the design and application of survey research in sociology and also sought to develop ‘middle-range’ theories that could offer explanations of specific, clearly demonstrated social phenomena: forexample, theories of reference groups, cross-pressures, and the ‘two-step’ flow of mass communications. Their research tended, however, to be focused on social relations within relatively small-scale milieu and the development of theory applicable at a more macro-level was thus constrained -- as also by Merton’s withdrawal from the Weberian orientation evident in his early years and by Lazarsfeld’s difficulties with Weber’s action theory.