American Soldier in WWII subject index and codebooks

In October 1941, the United States Army established a Research Branch of the War Department’s Information and Education Division. During World War II the Research Branch was staffed by social scientists and was given the task of providing the Army with information which might be helpful to the military in the formulation of policies and procedures. One of those social scientists was Samuel A. Stouffer, director of the Laboratory of Social Relations and professor of sociology (1946-1960) at Harvard University. Stouffer directed a series of studies beginning in 1943 on the attitudes of the serviceman, the results of which appear in four volumes as The American Soldier: Studies in Social Psychology in World War II (1949). As director of the professional staff, Stouffer had general responsibility for research and selection of personnel.

Stouffer and his research team conducted over 600,000 interviews with soldiers gathering data on the attitudes, emotions, and conduct of military men who were involved in the war and afterward returning to civilian life. Examined was the importance of morale, group cohesion, and military performance. Also surveyed was the relationship between attitudes and sociocultural settings, including ideologies, the status characteristics of individuals, military status, and military experience. Two prominent examples of the use of the data to influence public policies were the development of the Army’s point system for demobilization and the desegregation of the armed services in the 1950s. Moreover, the survey responses led the military to establish the Expert and Combat Infantrymen’s Badge, revise pay scales, influence what appeared in various publications including Yank, the Army Weekly, Stars & Stripes, and Frank Capra’s Why We Fight propaganda films.

The work of the Research Branch during World War II raised the prestige of social science research after the end of the war and helped establish public opinion as an important area of scientific work. The resulting volumes were widely reviewed, used in military academies and schools, and discussed in meetings of sociological and psychological organizations. Although based on military needs, the findings of the Research Branch contained information and insights on human behavior which had a direct relevance to psychologists, educators, public relations specialists, social theoreticians, and the military policymaker during the post-war period.

Samuel Andrew Stouffer (1900-1960), sociologist and developer of survey techniques, was director of the Laboratory of Social Relations and professor of sociology at Harvard University (1946-1960). After earning his PhD in sociology at the University of Chicago (1930), Stouffer served as professor of social statistics at the University of Wisconsin (1932-1935) and professor of sociology at the University of Chicago (1935-1946). In the 1930s, Stouffer began to investigate the area of opinion research and mass communications. Recognized for his sophisticated statistical methods, Stouffer became director of the Research Branch of the War Department’s Information and Education Division in 1941. The Research Branch conducted hundreds of surveys and social psychological studies of American soldiers during World War II. Later in his career, Stouffer turned his attention to the study of attitudes in situations of conflicting values and roles.