Cumulative Social Inquiry: Transforming Novelty Into Innovation

Robert B. Smith is a senior statistician at Cytel, Inc., in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is an advisory editor of the journal Quality & Quantity. Previously, he taught political sociology, research methods, and theory development at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research there focused on the social consequences of war, generalizations of path analysis, and computer simulations of social processes. Since then, he has worked extensively in applied research. His publications include articles on political and social processes; the three volumes of the edited Handbook of Social Science Methods, which links qualitative and quantitative methods; and applications of multilevel models to aspects of human development. His recent research at the University of Cambridge-MIT Institute assesses student exchange programs and pedagogical experiments. He was a Fulbright lecturer in structural sociology at Ghent University, Belgium, and has served as president of the Boston chapter of the American Statistical Association. ?