Paul Felix Lazarsfeld, popularly known as the founder of modern research surveys, made considerable contributions towards statistical survey analysis, panel methods, latent structure analysis and contextual analysis.
In the early 1930s, Lazarsfeld introduced research through the use of surveys by conducting a study of Marienthal, a small industrial town near Vienna which suffered from a high unemployment rate. In 1933, he published a paper titled “Marienthal: The Sociography of an Unemployed Community, which gives insight into Lazarsfeld’s ability to combine quantitative and qualitative approaches. By careful assessment of social conditions, life histories, family budgets, spending habits and daily routines, Lazarsfeld transformed qualitative data into quantitative analysis, a breakthrough in the field of research survey methodology.
Lazarsfeld also made major contributions in the field of unemployment research surveys, public opinion surveys and market research, mass media and communications research surveys, along with political sociology and applied sociology.
Lazarsfeld created new, sometimes controversial, directions in applied social research. Criticized by some sociologists 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.
Sara, Paul Lazarfelds certainly had an impact on modern survey research. However, there are also many others. Elmo Roper in the 1930s was a jeweler and in response to the great depression surveyed his customers to determine what other products and services he could sell them. His son “Bud” also made great contributions by conducting surveys on a regular basis in the 1940s and 1950s for Life Magazine, Lou Harris in the 50s and early 60s conducted political polling for John Kennedy, and later carried his election fame into conducting surveys for large corporations and Newsweek magazine with William Brink on Black and White race relations in this country. Dan Yankelovitch conducted many surveys using his knowledge of Psychology to get at the hidden motivations of consumers. I would be relunctant to call any single person the Father of Modern Polling. Many would argue for Renis Lickert, Daniel Starch, the Gallups, AC Nielsen, and Archibald Crossley, etc.. Moreover, surveys go back as far as 1824, and were also documented in 1879,1895 and 1910.