Lazarsfeld Award (Career Achievement): Tom A.B. Snijders

Tom Snijders (Honorary Professor RUG & Emeritus Fellow of Nuffield College, University of Oxford, UK) received the Paul F. Lazarsfeld award of the Methodology Section of the American Sociological Association, a career achievement award for contributions to the field of sociological methodology. It was presented at the 117th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, held in Los Angeles (CA), August 5-9, 2022.

The Section on Methodology presents its Paul F. Lazarsfeld award to Tom A.B. Snijders, Honorary Professor of Methodology and Statistics at the Department of Sociology, University of Groningen, the Netherlands, and Emeritus Fellow of Nuffield College, University of Oxford, United Kingdom. Snijders’s distinguished contributions advance diverse branches of sociological methodology, including the statistical analysis of network data, multilevel modeling, and item response theory. He is especially well-known for developing statistical methods for studying longitudinal panel data on network dynamics. These can also model the co-evolution of networks and behavior, seeking to separate social selection and social influence processes.

As well, Snijders jointly authored an important Sociological Methodology chapter that resolved a key problem that previously had impeded the estimation of exponential random graph models. His methodological work includes software that implements methods he has developed, especially package SIENA (now RSiena) and its predecessor StOCNET. His contributions to the field also encompass the supervision of legions of Ph.D. students who now make contributions of their own. He is a most deserving recipient of the Section’s Lazarsfeld Award for 2022.