Crossley, Archibald (1896–1985)

Archibald Maddock Crossley was born on December 7, 1896, in Fieldsboro, New Jersey. His love for the state of his birth carried him to Princeton University in 1917; he later worked for a small advertising firm based in Philadelphia. Crossley's research career began soon afterward, in 1918, when he was asked by an executive in his firm to create a research department, something he knew nothing about. Once the department was created, Crossley began work on “Crossley Rating,” which many believe is the first ratings system. Using this rating, one could estimate the number of telephone subscribers tuned in to any radio show at any given time. Creating the ratings was no easy task, requiring various Crossley aides to thumb through telephone books covering more than 80 U.S. cities. From these telephone books, researchers were able to randomly call individuals and determine to what programs they were listening. For 16 years, people were asked one by one until May 1942, when Crossley's rating system was replaced with a simpler Hooper telephone poll. Even though Crossley's measure gave no indication about what people thought of a program, it was still used to get a sense of what programs people were listening to, which soon became synonymous with good and bad programming, similar to the Nielsen and Arbitron ratings systems of today.

Crossley's work in radio ratings served as a catalyst for other research endeavors, leading him to form Crossley, Inc. in 1926, a company that still operates today under the name Crossley Surveys, created in 1954 when Crossley, Inc. merged with another firm. During this time, Crossley collaborated with George Gallup and Elmo Roper and successfully predicted the 1936 presidential election, which was made infamous in public opinion circles after the Literary Digest incorrectly predicted Alfred Landon would defeat Franklin D. Roosevelt, an error that Crossley and others attributed to sample bias and the mis-analysis of poll returns. This experience led Crossley to participate actively in the establishment of the Market Research Council, the National Council on Public Polls, and the American Association for Public Opinion Research, for which he served as president from 1952 to 1953.

During his academic career, Crossley concentrated on the psychology of questionnaires, focusing on how question wording could affect how the intensity of a given response is measured. This led him to crusade for ethics and professional polling standards at many different levels. This in turn led him to publicly admonish the Lyndon Johnson administration in 1967 for leaking a private Crossley poll to the press in an attempt to bolster Johnson's diminishing popularity. This emphasis on the importance of research and ethics some say is Crossley's most important contribution, since it frames the way social scientists think about their research and profession. Time and time again Crossley would remind his colleagues about the importance of using public opinion research to improve the human condition. Perhaps it is appropriate that Archibald Crossley passed away in his home in Princeton on May 1, 1985, since that is where he spent the majority of his professional life. However, even in memory Archibald Crossley serves as an important reminder to all social scientists about the potential of our research and the importance of our profession.

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