Kish, Leslie (1910–2000)

Leslie Kish was a statistician, sociologist, and co-founder of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. His work had a profound and [Page 408]lasting effect on the field of survey research. His book Survey Sampling, published in 1965, formulated many of the principles that are today taken for granted in scientific survey research. The theory of equal probability sampling was first proposed in Survey Sampling, as was that of the design effect (deff). The Kish method of selecting respondents with equal probability is named for Leslie Kish. He was also an early proponent of counting and measuring nonresponse in survey research.

Kish emigrated to the United States from Hungary along with the rest of his family in 1925 at the age of 15. His father died shortly after the family arrived in the United States, and Leslie had to find work to help support the family. While working full-time he finished high school through an evening program in 1930. He then enrolled in the City College of New York while he continued to work full-time during the day. With less then 1 year left in his college studies, in 1937 he volunteered for the International Brigade and fought for the Spanish Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War.

In 1939 he returned to New York City and the City College, graduating with a bachelor's degree in mathematics later that year. He then took a job with the U.S. Census Bureau in Washington, D.C. and after working there a short time, he obtained a job with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). There he was the department's first sampling statistician. His boss at that time was Rensis Likert. Kish, Likert, and others at the USDA implemented the scientific survey sampling techniques that are still in use today. In 1942 Kish left the USDA to join the U.S. Army and served as a meteorologist until 1945.

In 1947 Kish and others (including Likert) went to the University of Michigan to establish the Survey Research Center, which went on to become the Institute for Social Research. At Michigan, Kish first earned a master's degree in mathematical statistics in 1948 and then a Ph.D. in sociology in 1952. He retired in 1981 and was professor emeritus at Michigan until his death in 2000. While in earlier jobs Kish was able to effect change at an organizational level, teaching at the University of Michigan provided him with a much larger stage from which he helped shape the entire field of survey research.

Kish was a devoted and enthusiastic scholar. He was a Fellow of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1994 he was named Honorary Fellow of the International Statistical Institute, an honor that has been referred to as the Nobel Prize of Statistics. In 1995 Kish was named Honorary Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

He also had a passion for teaching and the dissemination of knowledge. Eager to see scientific sampling methodology spread to other countries, he started the Sampling Program for Foreign Statisticians in 1961. The program was an unqualified success. It has trained hundreds of statisticians from scores of countries. The program continues its mission today as the Sampling Program for Survey Statisticians.

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