Paul F. Lazarsfeld

Voting is an examination of the factors that make people vote the way they do. Based on the famous Elmira Study, carried out by a team of skilled social scientists during the 1948 presidential campaign, it shows how voting is affected by social class, religious background, family loyalties, on-the-job relationships, local pressure groups, mass communication media, and other factors. Still highly relevant, Voting is one of the most frequently cited books in the field of voting behavior.

The People’s Choice is a landmark psychological and statistical study of American voters during the 1940 and 1944 presidential elections, originally published in 1948. Amid a burgeoning interest in statistics and population sampling, it constituted the first systematic effort to trace voters’ behavior across the duration of a presidential campaign and to follow up on this data years later. During the 1940 campaign, Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet tracked a sample population of six hundred people from Erie County, Ohio, interviewing them monthly in the seven months leading up to Election Day. Their subsequent study in 1944 expanded the sample to include a nationwide cross-section of two thousand voters. Contrary to the fears of the time, Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet found that media such as newspapers, radio, and campaign advertising did not have a profound influence on individual voting habits. Instead, interpersonal interactions and word of mouth were more significant for most voters. They argued that mass media reached a small but crucial subset of people, who then passed information on to less avid media consumers. The study paired the same interviewers and interviewees over time, leading to remarkable extended conversations that feature more casual and exploratory discussions than were typical of social-scientific research. Quoted verbatim, they offer additional insight into the American electorate. A groundbreaking work of empirical political science, The People’s Choice remains of great importance in an era of anxiety about the influence of media on voting behavior.

First published in 1955, "Personal Influence" reports the results of a pioneering study conducted in Decatur, Illinois, validating Paul Lazarsfeld's serendipitous discovery that messages from the media may be further mediated by informal "opinion leaders" who intercept, interpret, and diffuse what they see and hear to the personal networks in which they are embedded. This classic volume set the stage for all subsequent studies of the interaction of mass media and interpersonal influence in the making of everyday decisions in public affairs, fashion, movie-going, and consumer behavior. The contextualizing essay in Part One dwells on the surprising relevance of primary groups to the flow of mass communication. Peter Simonson of the University of Pittsburgh has written that "Personal Influence was perhaps the most influential book in mass communication research of the postwar era, and it remains a signal text with historic significance and ongoing reverberations...more than any other single work, it solidified what came to be known as the dominant paradigm in the field, which later researchers were compelled either to cast off or build upon." In his introduction to this fiftieth-anniversary edition, Elihu Katz discusses the theory and methodology that underlie the Decatur study and evaluates the legacy of his coauthor and mentor, Paul F. Lazarsfeld.

"One of the main theses of the Marienthal study was that prolonged unemployment leads to a state of apathy in which the victims do not utilize any longer even the few opportunities left to them. The vicious cycle between reduced opportunities and reduced level of aspiration has remained the focus of all subsequent discussions." So begin the opening remarks to the English-language edition of what has become a major classic in the literature of social stratification.

När textilfabriken i den lilla orten Marienthal i Österrike slog igen i spåren av den stora depressionen blev följderna förödande: ett helt samhälle kastades ut i arbetslöshet. Hur skulle befolkningen reagera? Skulle de resa sig i protest som många av samtidens radikala intellektuella trodde och hoppades? Nej, blev det korta svaret från det unga forskarlag som 1933 med sin studie De arbetslösa i Marienthal (Die Arbeitslosen von Marienthal) kunde konstatera att bottenlöst elände inte i sig skapar sociala omvälvningar. Arbetslösheten ledde till resignation och apati snarare än vilja att förändra samhällets ekonomiska och sociala ordning. Arbetes dolda betydelse för det sociala och mänskliga livet blev tydlig när det försvann. Marienthalstudien har kommit att bli ett av samhällsvetenskapens mest legendariska arbeten. Den var nyskapande i sitt sätt att kombinera kvalitativa och kvantitativa data och åttio år senare finns det fortfarande mycket att lära av forskarnas oförvägna sätt att använda sig av allt från biografiska intervjuer till hushållsbudgetar, föreningsdeltagande och kostnaden för att förverkliga barns julklappslistor. Boken kan än idag med fördel användas som introduktion till konsten att göra samhällsvetenskapliga undersökningar. Den österrikiske sociologen Christian Fleck ger i sin inledning en introduktion till boken och författarna och svenske sociologen Paavo Bergman framhäver i sitt efterord Marienthalstudiens metodologiska och analytiska förtjänster och visar på dess centrala plats i studiet av arbetslöshet.

Marienthal-studiens grunnspørsmål var: Blir arbeidere apatiske eller revolusjonære under arbeidsledigheten? Denne undersøkelsen er kjent for en fantasifull kombinasjon av metoder, bl.a bruk av dagbøker og deltagende observasjon.

First published in 1955, "Personal Influence" reports the results of a pioneering study conducted in Decatur, Illinois, validating Paul Lazarsfeld's serendipitous discovery that messages from the media may be further mediated by informal "opinion leaders" who intercept, interpret, and diffuse what they see and hear to the personal networks in which they are embedded. This classic volume set the stage for all subsequent studies of the interaction of mass media and interpersonal influence in the making of everyday decisions in public affairs, fashion, movie-going, and consumer behavior. The contextualizing essay in Part One dwells on the surprising relevance of primary groups to the flow of mass communication. Peter Simonson of the University of Pittsburgh has written that "Personal Influence was perhaps the most influential book in mass communication research of the postwar era, and it remains a signal text with historic significance and ongoing reverberations...more than any other single work, it solidified what came to be known as the dominant paradigm in the field, which later researchers were compelled either to cast off or build upon." In his introduction to this fiftieth-anniversary edition, Elihu Katz discusses the theory and methodology that underlie the Decatur study and evaluates the legacy of his coauthor and mentor, Paul F. Lazarsfeld.

"One of the main theses of the Marienthal study was that prolonged unemployment leads to a state of apathy in which the victims do not utilize any longer even the few opportunities left to them. The vicious cycle between reduced opportunities and reduced level of aspiration has remained the focus of all subsequent discussions." So begin the opening remarks to the English-language edition of what has become a major classic in the literature of social stratification.

Without Paul F. Lazarsfeld the social sciences would not be what they are today. In his work on unemployment, voting, consumer behaviour, and social influence, among other subjects, his methodological emphasis on vigorously controlled scientific language and structures transformed social research worldwide. His criticism of observational, conceptual, and inferential procedures in sociology led to the formation of universally applied observational and analytical techniques. The 18 essays in "On Social Research and Its Language" illustrate the diversity of Lazarsfeld's substantive, methodological, and organizational interests. Spanning the years 1933 to 1972, they encompass his own works of social research, as well as writings on methodology and the history and sociology of social research. In addition, Raymond Boudon provides a revealing biography of Lazarsfeld and his influence on sociology.

Without Paul F. Lazarsfeld the social sciences would not be what they are today. In his work on unemployment, voting, consumer behaviour, and social influence, among other subjects, his methodological emphasis on vigorously controlled scientific language and structures transformed social research worldwide. His criticism of observational, conceptual, and inferential procedures in sociology led to the formation of universally applied observational and analytical techniques. The 18 essays in "On Social Research and Its Language" illustrate the diversity of Lazarsfeld's substantive, methodological, and organizational interests. Spanning the years 1933 to 1972, they encompass his own works of social research, as well as writings on methodology and the history and sociology of social research. In addition, Raymond Boudon provides a revealing biography of Lazarsfeld and his influence on sociology.