Paul Lazarsfeld and Applied Social Research: Invention of the University Applied Social Research Institute

The rise and fall of the Bureau of Applied Social Research, and the life of its founder and mentor, Paul Lazarsfeld should ideally be presented as a drama by Brecht, accompanied by the dissonant and jazzy music of pre-Nazi Central Europe, and its depression-time equivalent in the United States (from “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime” to “Happy Days are Here Again!”). The concept of the university applied social research organization (all the adjectives are necessary) was born in the mind of a social activist student in the intellectual hothouse of Vienna between the World Wars. He wanted new methods of research to help bring radical social change; he had to start by studying soap-buying. He created a penniless research center in a near-bankrupt society, and found his friends jobs studying the unemployed.