8/12/2019 In Memoriam: Albert E. Gollin, 19301999
1/2
IN MEMORIAM
Albert E. Gollin, 19301999
Albert E. Gollin, known as Al to his colleagues and Albie to his
closest
family and friends, died on March 24 after a long struggle
against multiple
systems degeneration, a degenerative disease of the autonomic
nervoussystem.
Througout his professional life, he was a champion and
practitioner of
applied social research. His early studies, first at the Bureau
of AppliedSocial Research at Columbia University, where he received
his Ph.D. in
sociology in 1967, and later at the Bureau of Social Science
Research inWashington, DC, resemble a catalog of the social causes
and problems of
the time, including studies of the Peace Corps, various protest
movements,
international education, drug abuse, and the quality of urban
life.The civil rights movement was both a strategic research site
and the
focus of a deep personal commitment. He organized and directed a
volun-
teer study of the 1963 March on Washington and followed it with
a partici-
pant observers assessment as part of a parallel study of the
1968 PoorPeoples Campaign in the wake of Dr. Martin Luther Kings
assassination.
With the move to the Newpaper Advertising Bureau in 1977, the
focusof his research shifted to studies of media use, especially
newspaper read-
ership and readership trends, and the formation of newspaper
reading hab-
its and other media uses by children and adolescents. He retired
from theNewspaper Association of America (NABs successor) as vice
president
and director of research in 1994.
A lively and accomplished speaker, he was sought after by many
orga-
nizations on many occasions, primarily professional associations
and avariety of industry groups, but also colleges and
universities. He heldoffice in many organizations, including the
Eastern Sociological Society,
the Research Industry Coalition, and the Market Research
Council, as well
as AAPOR, WAPOR, and the American Sociological Association.
Hehelped draft or revise several associations codes of ethics and
wrote and
lectured extensively on the topic. One of his last activities
for AAPOR,
as AAPOR Councillor-at-large in 199596, was to serve on a
standardssubcommittee considering revision of the AAPOR Code, where
his advice
and counsel were, as always, invaluable.Although known to AAPOR
primarily for his research and writing onnewspaper readership,
public opinion, and polling, and for his long and
active involvement in the associations affairs, he was equally
active in
the American Sociological Association (ASA) as an advocate for
appliedsocial science. His lobbying for greater visibility for
applied sociology
atGeorgeMasonUniversityonJune1,2014
http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/
Downloade
dfrom
http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/
8/12/2019 In Memoriam: Albert E. Gollin, 19301999
2/2
436 In Memoriam
and the needs of practitioners within ASA led to a December 1981
ASA-
sponsored conference and book, Applied Sociology (Jossey-Bass,
1983),
edited by Howard Freeman, Russell Dynes, Peter Rossi, and
WilliamFoote Whyte, to which Al contributed the summary chapter. In
1984 he
was invited to chair an ad hoc committee to establish selection
criteria
for an ASA Distinguished Career Award for the Practice of
Sociology,and in 1994 he was a recipient of this award.
Much as he championed the cause of applied social science, his
own
intellectual interests were rooted in history and politics, and
the role ofpublic opinion in shaping both. He relished his role in
editing a special
issue of the Public Opinion Quarterlyon Polls and the News
Media.
He reveled in his role as an advisor to the Public Opinion
Quarterlyandas the person largely responsible for negotiating its
successful transfer to
the American Association for Public Opinion Research from
ColumbiaUniversity in 1985. And he took great pride in organizing a
week-long
ASASoviet Sociological Association Seminar on Public Opinion,
which
was held in Moscow and St. Petersburg in the winter of 1989, at
the heightof glasnost and optimism about the future of the Soviet
Union and its
relations with the rest of the world. In 1996, at the last AAPOR
conference
he attended, he organized and chaired a session titled Public
Opinion
about Public Opinion and Polling, as a Fellow of the Freedom
MediaStudies Center.
Though active in many other organizations, his heart belonged
toAAPOR, of which he was a member for almost 30 years. In 1998,
he
received AAPORs highest honor, the Award for Exceptionally
Distin-
guished Achievement, with a citation which read, in part, His
sharp witand warm embrace enlivened decades of AAPOR meetings. For
years,
he served as the organizations unofficial parliamentarian and
pragmatic
political mentor. . . . [a]nd as conference chair, president,
presenter, and
member of innumerable executive councils and advisory
committees.. . . He is a generalist rather than a specialist, a man
of good judgmentand uncommon good sense.
For all these reasons, and all these traits, AAPOR will miss
him.
eleanor singer
atGeorgeMasonUniversityonJune1,2014
http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/
Downloade
dfrom
http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/
