Survey Research Center

The Survey Research Center (SRC) was established in 1946 and is affiliated with the Institute for Social Research (ISR) at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Rensis Likert, the inventor of the Likert scale, was the first director of SRC, which has been a pioneer in political behavior research since its foundation. Most of the SRC's political behavior research between the late 1940s and the 1960s was initiated by its Political Behavior Program.

In a 1948 foreign affairs survey that also measured the national electorate's intention to vote, researchers in SRC accurately predicted Harry Truman's victory in the 1948 election, whereas the commercial pollsters missed the forecast. After the 1948 election, Angus Campbell and Robert Kahn in SRC introduced a socialpsychological approach to the ...