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. ...