Abstract
This volume of Sociological Methodology is dedicated to Allan Lee McCutcheon, who died May 3, 2016, in Lincoln, Nebraska. 1 He died while swimming, one of the activities he loved. The sociological community knew Allan as an expert in survey research and public opinion surveys. His interest in surveys led him to establish master’s and doctoral programs in survey research and methodology at University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), where he was a member of the faculty in sociology for 19 years. He also served as the founding director of the UNL–Gallup Research Center, which has a special relationship with the Gallup Organization. Since 2003, through his work with other survey methodologists and statisticians, he participated in numerous exit polls, which provided information on election projections to major national television news and cable networks and the Associated Press, among other entities.
At the time of his death, Allan was emeritus professor of statistics and survey research and methodology at UNL. He was also a research professor at the Joint Program in Survey Methodology at the University of Maryland, a senior statistical director for the National Election Pool, and a senior scientist at the Gallup Organization. At UNL, he was the Donald O. Clifton Chair of Survey Science.
Born on March 15, 1950, in Des Moines, Iowa, to Merle Marvin McCutcheon and Margaret Lucille Larabee, Allan attended high school in Clarinda and Nevada, Iowa. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Iowa State University in 1972 and an MA and PhD in sociology from the University of Chicago in 1977 and 1982, respectively. At Chicago, he studied with Leo Goodman and was a contemporary of Clifford C. Clogg.
An obituary published in the Clarinda Herald-Journal described Allan as “an internationally-recognized scholar, a gourmet cook, wine enthusiast, master swimmer, world traveler, a beloved professor and mentor, and a loving husband, father, grandfather, brother and friend.” Professionally, Allan was a fellow of the American Statistical Association, the Royal Statistical Society, and the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research. He enjoyed numerous affiliations with European universities and research centers. After his retirement from his university position at UNL in 2015, he split his time between his homes in Lincoln and San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Allan was well known in sociological methodology for his work in the application of latent class models to survey data. He published widely using these methods, and his work exemplified the very best in the area, including many articles in Public Opinion Quarterly; a textbook, Latent Class Analysis (Sage, 1987); and a volume coedited with Jacques A. Hagenaars, Applied Latent Class Analysis (Cambridge, 2002). He was a valued reviewer for Sociological Methodology on latent class methods, and we were planning to invite him to perform another review when we learned of his passing. Allan will be missed by all who knew him, including some of the authors of chapters in the present volume.