A Lost Decade? László Radványi and the Origins of Public Opinion Research in Mexico, 1941–1952
Address correspondence to Alejandro Moreno, Department of Political Science, ITAM, Rio Hondo No. 1, Tizapan-San Angel, Mexico D.F., 01000, Mexico, amoreno{at}itam.mx
This article documents public opinion research activities in Mexico in the 1940s and the role played by Hungarian professor László Radványi, who immigrated to that country at the height of World War II. Our research relies on several of Radványi's publications archived in different countries, as well as on interviews with family, acquaintances, and experts on the work of his wife, the German poet Anna Seghers. During his years in Mexico, Radványi founded the Scientific Institute of Mexican Public Opinion, in 1941, and the International Journal of Opinion and Attitude Research, in 1947—a forefather of today's IJPOR. He was also a founding member of WAPOR. His early "sample surveys" raised important methodological issues and recorded opinion results that reflect the vibrant times of war and policy making in a modernizing country. However, Radványi's contribution to the profession has been virtually forgotten. Until now, accounts about how public opinion research began in Mexico either ignored Radványi's works or reduced his ten years of survey research to a single footnote. This article is an attempt to fill this enormous omission and highlight some of Radványi's contributions to these early stages of survey research.
It is a revised version of a paper presented at the 60th annual conference of the World Association for Public Opinion Research, Berlin, September 2007. The authors thank Félix Espejel-Ontiveros, Helen Fehervary, Dieter Klein, Lucía and Martín Luis Guzmán, Pierre Radványi, and Christiane Zehl-Romero for their time and interviews, and three anonymous reviewers of IJPOR for their valuable comments.
Received for publication November 1, 2007. Accepted for publication November 15, 2008.