icythaw.pages.dev

Paul f lazarsfeld fellow

    •

Paul F. Lazarsfeld

LAZARSFELD, PAUL F. (1901–1976), U.S. sociologist. Born in Vienna in 1901, Lazarsfeld studied mathematics and psychology at the University of Vienna and came to the United States in 1933 on a Rockefeller fellowship. He became a director of the Research Center at the University of Newark in 1936, and director of the newly established office of Radio Research at the University of Princeton in 1937. After 1940 he was professor and chairman of the Department of Sociology at Columbia University, where he remained until 1970. In addition, he was president of the American Sociological Association. In 1945 Lazarsfeld became director of the Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia, a pioneering venture that has become the model for a number of similar research institutes at American universities. The published works of Lazarsfeld and his collaborators deal with public opinion research, and generally with quantitative research and its techniques. Latent structure analysis, which was developed by Lazarsfeld as a major tool in attitude survey research, assumes that

    •

Paul Felix Lazarsfeld (February 13, 1901 – August 30, 1976) was one of the major figures in twentieth century Americansociology. Founder of the Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia University, he conducted large-scale studies of the effects of communication through mass media on society, particularly on voting behavior. Lazarsfeld developed the "two-step flow" theory of communication, based on his findings that the majority of the general public did not form their opinions or decide on a course of action based on directly receiving information, but rather relied on "opinion leaders." He also articulated concepts such as the "black-and-white" alternatives, which are used by governments to present situations in clear-cut choice format with one being unacceptable and the other desirable, and the "narcotizing dysfunction" of overexposure to information leading to public apathy. Lazarsfeld's work illustrated the use of quantitative, mathematically-based, scientific research into sociological issues. His use of objective techniques and meas

    •

Paul F. Lazarsfeld
by
Christian Fleck
  • LAST REVIEWED: 12 January 2023
  • LAST MODIFIED: 12 January 2023
  • DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756841-0272

  • Coleman, James S. 1980. Paul F. Lazarsfeld: The substance and style of his work. In Sociological traditions from generation to generation: Glimpses of the American experience. Edited by Robert K. Merton and Matilda W. Riley, 153–174. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

    Coleman, a former student and collaborator, focuses here on the performance of Lazarsfeld as teacher and research director. Coleman wonderfully characterizes Lazarsfeld’s inclination to recruit both younger people and peers to work on topics he found most interesting.

  • Coleman, James S. 1990. Columbia in the 1950s. In Authors of their own lives: Intellectual autobiographies by twenty American sociologists. Edited by Bennett M. Berger, 75–103. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.

    DOI: 10.1525/9780520341197-005

    In his contribution to a collection of autobiographical papers, Coleman describes and analyzes Columbia’s sociologist as a coll

    • Copyright ©icythaw.pages.dev 2025