Kenneth A. Bollen (born 1951) is the Henry Rudolf Immerwahr Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States ...

. Bollen joined UNC-Chapel Hill in 1985. He is also a member of the faculty in the Quantitative Psychology Program housed in the L. L. Thurstone Psychometric Laboratory. He is a fellow at the Carolina Population Center, the

American Statistical Association The American Statistical Association (ASA) is the main professional organization for statisticians and related professionals in the United States. It was founded in Boston, Massachusetts on November 27, 1839, and is the second oldest continuousl ...

and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was also the Director of the Odum Institute for Research in Social Science from 2000 to 2010. His specialties are population studies and cross-national analyses of democratization. He is the author of several books and over a hundred papers, which have attracted
very large number of citations over the years
His best known publication, ''

Structural Equations with Latent Variables ''Structural Equations with Latent Variables'' is a statistics textbook by Kenneth Bollen which describes the framework of structural equation modeling. It is often used in graduate-level courses for structural equation modeling in the social sc ...

'', has bee
cited over 32,000 times
It integrated a diverse body of literature from several disciplines, and helped define the area of structural equation modeling (SEM). According to the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...

, "His best known substantive research is on the measurement, determinants, and consequences of liberal democracy in nations. The research revealed conservative and liberal biases in democracy measures and provided new measures that minimized the bias. He and colleagues delivered the first empirical estimates of the effects of British colonial history, world system position, and religious traditions on democracy." The National Science Foundation has Bollen on its Advisory Committee for Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences.

Honors and awards

In 2018, he won a career award of Psychometric society for lifetime achievement. In 2011, he was an Elected Fellow of the

. For the period 2010–2012, he was Elected Chair, Chair, Past Chair of the Section on Social, Economic, and Political Sciences of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). In 2008, he was and Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2002, he was added to the ISI Highly Cited database of "highly cited researchers" in the Social Sciences category as well as being recognized by a Reuters list. In 2000 he was the recipient of the ''Lazarsfeld Award for Methodological Contributions in Sociology'', the highest award for methodologists given by the American Sociological Association.

Books

*''

'', Wiley, 1989 *''Latent Curve Models: A Structural Equation Perspective'' (with Patrick Curran), Wiley, 2005

References

External links

Homepage
at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Homepage
at CPC the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Bio
at NISS {{DEFAULTSORT:Bollen, Kenneth A. American sociologists American statisticians 1951 births University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill faculty Living people Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellows of the American Statistical Association Brown University alumni Quantitative psychologists