ABSTRACT
Appointment at strategically located and prestigious Columbia University pitched Merton into a completely different (and new for social researchers) research environment, where he became a close life-long colleague of Paul Lazarsfeld. With Lazarsfeld in the Bureau of Social Research Merton carried out a range of studies, but particularly of morale, communications, housing, applied social research and politics. Merton systematised methodological advice on focus interviews (including focus group interviews), promulgated the approach of middle-range theory, put forward a revision of functional analysis, and furthered a series of analyses of key features of modernity. He wrapped up the decade with the publication of collected essays in his volume STSS, which quickly became a classic.
