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IN MEMORIAM

IN MEMORIAM

Gerald H. Shure

Professor of Psychology and Sociology

Los Angeles

1927—2002

 

During his tenure at UCLA, from 1968 until his retirement in 1991, Gerald Shure was responsible for the development of physical and computer facilities, advanced computer programs, and dozens of innovative ideas about their use that constitute lasting contributions to the quality of research in the social and behavioral sciences. These were based on Jerry's broad interests, high energy level, and intellectual versatility that were apparent even in his undergraduate and graduate days at the University of Chicago. After receiving his B.S. degree in 1956, he took a position as a teaching assistant in L. L. Thurstone's psychometrics laboratory and studied clinical psychology in Carl Roger's Counseling Center. His doctoral dissertation was directed by Ward Halstead, with whom he published important papers on cerebral localization of intellectual processes.

 

Shure's first academic position was in the Department of Psychology at the University of Utah, from 1954 to 1956. In 1956 he joined RAND Corporation in Santa Monica and, in 1958, went with the spin-off organization known as Systems Development Corporation (SDC). Appointed as Senior Social Scientist in the Division of Human Decision Making, Shure helped develop training plans for a project that afforded nationwide exercises of the Air Defense Command's man-computer defense system. In this work, he developed a focused interest in interaction processes, including group decision making and conflict resolution.

 

Jerry also began to realize the limitations of the methods currently used in experimental studies of group interaction and communication, namely, too few and too small groups and too narrow an array of measures that typically failed to yield both behavioral and subjective data. He became convinced that computers provide solutions to those problems, making possible efficient means of gathering data and the development of data analysis programs that aid in detecting patterns in complex data sets.

 

In 1969, Shure came to UCLA for the purpose of establishing the Center for Computer-Based Behavioral Studies (CCBS), which would become the first university-based laboratory designed to support multi-person, on-line research on social interaction in complex settings. He raised the funds necessary to construct a large addition to the Psychology Department's space in Franz Hall and to equip the Center with a powerful computer that enabled time sharing and interaction among two dozen terminals. A special system was designed to enable behavioral scientists who were not computer experts easily to conduct their research in the Center. To manage complex data sets, three interaction data analysis programs were also developed at CCBS.

 

Among Shure's most important contributions was the development, with colleagues from Sociology and the Institute for Social Science Research, of computer-assisted telephone interviewing procedures. Telephone surveys had been in use by public opinion organization for many years, and some primitive use had been made of computers. Jerry and his colleagues recognized that the CCBS computer system could employ multiple interviewers, randomly dial telephone numbers in a selected area, prompt each interviewer's posing and rephrasing of questions, and simplify the recording of respondents' answers. It is widely acknowledged that CCBS's development of this system set an example followed by other university research centers and, incidentally, that Jerry coined the acronym and name for the system (CATI, pronounced "Katie").

 

The CCBS facilities were used by researchers from many of the social science departments at UCLA. In his own research, Shure conducted experiments on communication networks, attitude factors in bargaining, and the effectiveness of pacifist strategies in conflicts. He also used the computer system to conduct simulations of international conflict (e.g., the Arab/Israeli and U.S./Russia conflicts), in which the participants role-played the opposing parties and, in day-long exercises, interacted via computer to work on their conflict. Shure also used CATI to gather data pertaining to the effects of death penalty considerations on jury deliberations. Jerry and other professors also developed ways to use CCBS for educational purposes, in teaching experimental and survey research methods.

 

From 1980 to 1983, he served with distinction on the Council of Academic Personnel. He was effective in this role despite an ongoing battle with thyroid cancer that was finally resolved in 1984 by radical neck surgery. The illness from cancer was one in a series of personal and family tragedies that beset Jerry. These included the tragic death of his first wife, Norma, from a heart attack on a ski slope in Utah. The final blow came when, after retirement in 1991, Jerry developed Alzheimer's disease, even as his second wife, Abney, gradually succumbed to Parkinson's disease.

 

Jerry took these events with amazing grace. He occasionally described himself as undergoing a series of tests of his character, similar to those inflicted on the biblical Job. His friends remember Jerry as, in the words of one colleague, "witty and charming, free of arrogance, and a pleasure to be around". He loved music and humor, and especially enjoyed demonstrating his skills, learned as a boy, in performing magic tricks—skills that he occasionally demonstrated at the Magic Castle in Hollywood. In his profession of social psychology, he gained universal respect; from his friends and family, he gained the enduring affection of all.

 

Harold H. Kelley

Bertram H. Raven

Melvin Seeman