In 1946, the sociologist and economist
Rensis Likert, creator of the
Likert scale, and six colleagues from his wartime work at the
Bureau of Agricultural Economics, including
Angus Campbell,
Leslie Kish, and
George Katona, formed the Survey Research Center (SRC) at the University of Michigan. The center gained credibility in its field due to a survey conducted in October 1948, when Campbell and
Robert L. Kahn added two questions about political leanings to a survey they were conducting for the
State Department about foreign policy. Their results, compiled just before the
presidential election in November, showed a large number of undecided voters and a small lead for
Harry Truman over
Thomas Dewey, at odds with most other polls that predicted a landslide for Dewey. When Truman ended up winning the election, the subsequent examination of polling techniques led to the
probability sampling utilized by the SRC becoming dominant in the field over the
quota sampling that had been favored by other polling outfits. This survey was the first of what became the
American National Election Studies (or ANES). In 2010, the ANES was named one of the National Science Foundation’s “Sensational 60” projects. Psychologist
Kurt Lewin had founded the Research Center for Group Dynamics at
MIT in 1945, and after his death in 1947 the center's ensuing funding problems prompted its remaining members to find it a new home. in 1948 under a new director,
Dorwin Cartwright. The two groups united to form the Institute for Social Research on February 1, 1949. The SRC's Political Behavior Program, which had taken over the direction of election studies, became the Center for Political Studies in 1970. The Population Studies Center moved from the university's
College of Literature, Science, and the Arts to ISR in 1998, bringing the total number of centers in ISR to five. == Organization ==