Robert Merton; Robert King Merton, inventor of the focus group, died on February 23rd, aged 92.(Obituary)
Economist (US), The, March, 2003
Robert King Merton, inventor of the focus group, died on February 23rd, aged 92
BY THE 1940s almost every home in the United States had a radio; sometimes there were several. The industry was getting rich from advertising linked to popular programmes. What it sought was a reliable way of measuring popularity to ensure that advertisers were paying enough. In 1941 Paul Lazarsfeld, a statistician at Columbia University in New York, got together a group of people representing a typical radio audience and gave them some buttons to press as they listened to various programmes. He was then able to work out which programmes had the most appeal. Helping him at these sessions was Robert Merton, who had recently joined Columbia. At the end of each session Mr Merton asked...
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