International contacts
The problems at the UvA interrupted our international contacts which we liked a lot. Earlier we have reported about our trips abroad to learn new things, about Willem´s teaching in the Summer school in Essex, the visits of Zvi Namenwirth, the long stay of Albert Satorra and Juan Manuel Batista with us. And the International conferences we had organized and participated in. Now that we had found a solution for our problems we were looking again for our international contacts.
Our SEM contact
Albert Satorra came back again, now at the SRF. We worked on several papers indicating the importance of the power of tests in evaluating the quality of models and we worked on a paper to detect misspecifications in SEM models. At the end of that period I had to admit that I could not guide him any further in his research. I suggested that he should go to California to work with the active group of Peter Bentler and learn more. Albert agreed and I just took the phone, called Peter Bentler and told him that Albert Satorra would like to continue his research in his group. He immediate agreed and the next year Albert went for a longer period to Los Angeles and published several papers together with Peter Bentler. We visited him there and it seems that we had heated debates with the SEM group that was at that time in Los Angeles.
Our SEM contact
Albert Satorra came back again, now at the SRF. We worked on several papers indicating the importance of the power of tests in evaluating the quality of models and we worked on a paper to detect misspecifications in SEM models. At the end of that period I had to admit that I could not guide him any further in his research. I suggested that he should go to California to work with the active group of Peter Bentler and learn more. Albert agreed and I just took the phone, called Peter Bentler and told him that Albert Satorra would like to continue his research in his group. He immediate agreed and the next year Albert went for a longer period to Los Angeles and published several papers together with Peter Bentler. We visited him there and it seems that we had heated debates with the SEM group that was at that time in Los Angeles.
Some years later Albert came back to us as professor in Statistics at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. Joan Manuel and Albert have later convinced us to move to Barcelona, enjoy the Spanish life there and continue our cooperation in research.
A serious debate with German colleagues
In 1987 Wolfgang Jagodzinski, Steffen Kühnel and Peter Schmidt published a paper about repeated observations through time of the attitude towards “guestworkers”. They showed that the measurement of the attitudes became better and better through time. They called this the “Socratic effect” of repeatedly asking the same questions to people suggesting that they learn by asking as Socrates did in the past. The attitude was measured using factor analysis of some questions that measured rather different opinions nevertheless they were seen as all representing the same attitude. Willem had a more strict idea of social science measurement. He supposed that the different questions really measured different variables and should be analyzed as such. Therefore he asked for the data and together with Bas van den Putte he reanalyzed the same data with an alternative model which equally good fitted to the same data. The paper of Willem and Bas van den Putte was published in the same journal as the original paper. Then he asked the authors of the original paper to come to Amsterdam to have a discussion about the differences in models, analysis and interpretations.
It was a very interesting and nice discussion. There was not a clear conclusion about the fact whether one should use general factors as they did or simple measurement model for different opinions. We decided that we would organize a special session on this topic in the next conference of the Research Committee 33 of the ISA which would take place the next year in Dubrovnik.
Of course Willem thought that he was right and indicated that in another paper together with anoher new student. Harm Hartman. The title of the paper was quite provocative “Common factors can always be found but can they also be rejected?” Recently Willem published a paper which still emphasizes the same point. It shows how stubborn scientists can be.
In 1987 Wolfgang Jagodzinski, Steffen Kühnel and Peter Schmidt published a paper about repeated observations through time of the attitude towards “guestworkers”. They showed that the measurement of the attitudes became better and better through time. They called this the “Socratic effect” of repeatedly asking the same questions to people suggesting that they learn by asking as Socrates did in the past. The attitude was measured using factor analysis of some questions that measured rather different opinions nevertheless they were seen as all representing the same attitude. Willem had a more strict idea of social science measurement. He supposed that the different questions really measured different variables and should be analyzed as such. Therefore he asked for the data and together with Bas van den Putte he reanalyzed the same data with an alternative model which equally good fitted to the same data. The paper of Willem and Bas van den Putte was published in the same journal as the original paper. Then he asked the authors of the original paper to come to Amsterdam to have a discussion about the differences in models, analysis and interpretations.
It was a very interesting and nice discussion. There was not a clear conclusion about the fact whether one should use general factors as they did or simple measurement model for different opinions. We decided that we would organize a special session on this topic in the next conference of the Research Committee 33 of the ISA which would take place the next year in Dubrovnik.
Of course Willem thought that he was right and indicated that in another paper together with anoher new student. Harm Hartman. The title of the paper was quite provocative “Common factors can always be found but can they also be rejected?” Recently Willem published a paper which still emphasizes the same point. It shows how stubborn scientists can be.
The RC33 in Dubrovnik
In 1988 The RC33 conference took place in Dubrovnik. The last conference was organized by me and at the end of the conference the next one had to be planned. I asked Anuska Ferligoj whether it wouldn´t be nice to organize the next meeting in Yugoslavia which still existed at that time. She agreed to consider it and agreed to do it later. She did not chose Ljubljana for the conference but the famous town Dubrovnik. There we again met the people who were involved in the earlier conferences and some new people. The people who worked with me were of course also present at the conference as we can see in the picture below.
In 1988 The RC33 conference took place in Dubrovnik. The last conference was organized by me and at the end of the conference the next one had to be planned. I asked Anuska Ferligoj whether it wouldn´t be nice to organize the next meeting in Yugoslavia which still existed at that time. She agreed to consider it and agreed to do it later. She did not chose Ljubljana for the conference but the famous town Dubrovnik. There we again met the people who were involved in the earlier conferences and some new people. The people who worked with me were of course also present at the conference as we can see in the picture below.
She had taken care that the conference was very well organized and on a very special place. The session about the Socratic effect with my German friends took place as planned but I organized also a session about computer assisted data collection. This was the first social science methods conference where we presented the possibilities of computer assisted data collection and the telepanel approach which we had developed. Later I published a paper about this new development under the title “A technological revolution in data collection”. To be honest Anuska Ferligoj reacted with some suspicion on this title because like in the USSR also in Yugoslavia revolutionary ideas were coming up.
Cooperation with Hanspeter Kriesi
Hanspeter Kriesi became professor in Political science at the University of Amsterdam. Quickly we got in contact as was indicated in the project for the trade unions and other projects. At an early stage of his stay at the UvA he told me that I had very nice colleagues. I could not refrain myself from warning him that he may be wrong.Later he agreed with me on this point. I don´t know if there is a connection with his short stay in Amsterdam but he left aleady after 4 years. We continued seeing each other later regularly when I went to Davos for skating. This was always a nice opportunity to discuss political developments and scientific research we were involved in. Recently we cooperated in a project about attitudes towards Democracy in the different European countries. I helped him together with a colleague, Paolo Moncagatta, to develop a scale for the attitude towards democracy which could be used across the different countries in Europe based on data of the European Social Survey.
Hanspeter Kriesi became professor in Political science at the University of Amsterdam. Quickly we got in contact as was indicated in the project for the trade unions and other projects. At an early stage of his stay at the UvA he told me that I had very nice colleagues. I could not refrain myself from warning him that he may be wrong.Later he agreed with me on this point. I don´t know if there is a connection with his short stay in Amsterdam but he left aleady after 4 years. We continued seeing each other later regularly when I went to Davos for skating. This was always a nice opportunity to discuss political developments and scientific research we were involved in. Recently we cooperated in a project about attitudes towards Democracy in the different European countries. I helped him together with a colleague, Paolo Moncagatta, to develop a scale for the attitude towards democracy which could be used across the different countries in Europe based on data of the European Social Survey.
Final note
It will be clear that we picked up our international orientation and left the local quarrels behind us. We enjoyed again what we did and took it easy and lived again in a very friendly atmosphere. For the bad situation at the university this was a very nice compensation.
It will be clear that we picked up our international orientation and left the local quarrels behind us. We enjoyed again what we did and took it easy and lived again in a very friendly atmosphere. For the bad situation at the university this was a very nice compensation.