David Nasatir (1957)

Applied Researcher and Visiting Professor at UC, Berkeley.

With hubris nourished by degrees from MIT, Stanford and a fellowship at the Merrill Palmer Institute for Human Development, I arrived in Berkeley in the fall of 1957 with wife, child and not a clue about how we would support ourselves.

It took almost a decade for me to finish my Ph.D. I was having such a wonderful time as a graduate student. I taught in the department, was deeply immersed in research at the Survey Research Center (under the direction of Charlie Glock) and eventually became director of the International Data Library and Reference Service.

My involvement in the social science data archive movement and early consulting jobs eventually led to work with organizations as diverse as the Berkeley Board of Education, the United States Postal Service the Ford Foundation and the Government of Chile. My 1973 monograph for UNESCO, Data Archives for the Social Sciences helped establish the first international standards for this activity.

Applying perspectives and techniques learned from Herb Blumer, Marty Lipset, Hanan Selvin and Marty Trow involved me in efforts to assess the effects of such diverse policies and activities as school integration, the creation of a regional transportation system, college drinking policies, and the feasibility of transforming rice farmers to fish farmers. Trying to develop the resources, and demonstrate the potential of 'social impact analysis' using survey data has taken me to West Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, India, Europe and back to Berkeley.

Dissertation Title
Social Sources of Academic Failure: A Contextual Analysis