Paul Lazarsfeld - Influence

Influence

Lazarsfeld's many contributions to sociological method have earned him the title of the "founder of modern empirical sociology". Lazarsfeld made great strides in statistical survey analysis, panel methods, latent structure analysis, and contextual analysis. He is also considered a co-founder of mathematical sociology. Many of his ideas have been so influential as to now be considered self-evident. He is also noted for developing the two-step flow of communication model.

Lazarsfeld also made significant contributions by training many younger sociologists. One of Lazarsfeld's biographers, Paul Nerauth, writes that there are "dozens of books and hundreds of articles by his students and the students of his students, all of which still breathe the spirtit of this man's work". One of Lazarsfeld's successful students was Barney Glaser - propounder of grounded theory (GT) - the world's most quoted method for analyzing qualitative data. Index formations and qualitative mathematics were subjects taught by Lazarsfeld and are important components of the GT method according to Glaser. James Samuel Coleman, an important contributor to social theories of education and a future president of the American Sociological Association, was also a student of Lazarsfeld's at Columbia.

Lazarsfeld's other significant contributions consisted of constructing the institutions for academic sociology in the United States, including the "shop model" of collaborative research.

Paul Lazarsfeld has been the President of the American Sociological Association(ASA) and the American Association for Public Opinion Research. He has received honorary degrees from many universities, including University of Chicago, Columbia University, University of Vienna and Sorbonne University. Columbia University's social research center has been renamed after him. The career achievement award of the ASA Methodology section is also named in his honor.