Angus Campbell (1910 - 1980)
Professor Angus Campbell spent a sabbatical year with the SSRC Survey Unit whilst writing up his sections of Campbell, Converse and Rodgers, The Quality of American Life (Russell Sage, 1976). Unlike many British academics of his stature, he came to lunch virtually every day with the research staff. When SSRC decided to close the Survey Unit he was furious and led an international effort to get the decision reversed. He was incredibly supportive of my efforts to set up the Survey Research Unit at the then Polytechnic of North London (PNL) and invariably broke into his annual European vacation to come and visit us.
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(Photo, John Hall) This is a still frame from a Super-8 movie SRU garden reception for Angus Campbell I made of a garden party at my London house in summer 1978 when Angus and his wife Jean met the founder members of my newly established Survey Research Unit (SRU). Other frames capturing grainy images of the original staff of the Survey Research Unit are on Dramatis Personae
Amongst the advice he offered me were:
1st: Never employ anyone whose job you can't do if you have to.
2nd: No research unit will thrive in an academic institution if it does not have at its head a permanent member of the teaching staff.
3rd (as his own mother advised him)
"Marry a healthy woman!" (In 2013, his widow Jean was in good spirits and health, aged 93. She died on 19 March 2016: see Jean Campbell Obituary)
Angus was adamant that students in sociology and related areas should master quantitative and technical skills: as he put it, "Students in Physics and Chemistry have to know how to assemble and use lab equipment, why shouldn't sociologists have at least a basic grasp of the technical, statistical and computing skills needed for social research?"
In 1946, with Rensis Likert, he founded the Institute for Social Research at Ann Arbor, Michigan, and succeeded Likert as its 2nd Director. He later set up the Survey Research Center (SRC) at the University of Michigan. There's a special 60th anniversary report detailing the origins and history of SRC, listing key personnel (names to conjure with!) and research milestones.
Clyde Coombes
Angus Campbell 1910 - 1980: a Biographical Memoir
(National Academy of Sciences, 1987)
This scholarly and impressive memoir covers Angus' early work on subjective social indicators and I can see why Mark Abrams wanted him to come to SSRC for his sabbatical, not just for his work on measuring Quality of Life, but also for his earlier work on racial attitudes, the psychological effects of wartime bombing, political behaviour, and especially the development of survey research as an instrument of social policy and of the survey archive as a major scientific resource.
1st: Never employ anyone whose job you can't do if you have to.
2nd: No research unit will thrive in an academic institution if it does not have at its head a permanent member of the teaching staff.
3rd (as his own mother advised him)
"Marry a healthy woman!" (In 2013, his widow Jean was in good spirits and health, aged 93. She died on 19 March 2016: see Jean Campbell Obituary)
Angus was adamant that students in sociology and related areas should master quantitative and technical skills: as he put it, "Students in Physics and Chemistry have to know how to assemble and use lab equipment, why shouldn't sociologists have at least a basic grasp of the technical, statistical and computing skills needed for social research?"
In 1946, with Rensis Likert, he founded the Institute for Social Research at Ann Arbor, Michigan, and succeeded Likert as its 2nd Director. He later set up the Survey Research Center (SRC) at the University of Michigan. There's a special 60th anniversary report detailing the origins and history of SRC, listing key personnel (names to conjure with!) and research milestones.
Clyde Coombes
Angus Campbell 1910 - 1980: a Biographical Memoir
(National Academy of Sciences, 1987)
This scholarly and impressive memoir covers Angus' early work on subjective social indicators and I can see why Mark Abrams wanted him to come to SSRC for his sabbatical, not just for his work on measuring Quality of Life, but also for his earlier work on racial attitudes, the psychological effects of wartime bombing, political behaviour, and especially the development of survey research as an instrument of social policy and of the survey archive as a major scientific resource.