Stouffer, Samuel (Andrew) (1900–1960)

US sociologist. A specialist in public opinion research who promoted quantitative research methods – he introduced the use of ‘sample surveys’ – he became the leading sociologist of his generation. Although insisting on quantified data, he believed in applying the knowledge to solving social problems.

He was born in Sac City, Iowa. A Harvard MA in literature, he earned a University of Chicago PhD (1930) after several years of managing a family newspaper. He taught at the Universities of Wisconsin and Chicago and was the first director of Harvard's Laboratory of Social Relations 1946–60. He directed or made major contributions to the Social Science Research Council's research on social aspects of the Depression in the 1930s, a Carnegie Commission study of black Americans in 1940, and a Ford Foundation study of public attitudes toward communism in 1955. Under his leadership, the War Department's wartime research on soldiers 1941–46 yielded the classic Studies in Social Psychology in World War II (1949–50); this work led to the key theories of ‘relative deprivation’ and ‘reference groups’.