This series of Ernest Dichter's papers consists of 125 linear feet of proposals and research reports created by Dichter and his staffs between his arrival in the United States in 1938 and 1988. They include a few pre-Dichter reports from J. Stirling Gatchell, Inc., the earliest dated 1937. The reports have been kept are just as they were removed from the Dichters' house in 2008. A number of important reports, such as those on the Plymouth automobile, and the "Tiger in your tank" campaign, are now missing. Dr. Dichter's own card index, which cross-referenced reports by number, client and topic, is included. The reports begin with Dichter's work for J. Stirling Gatchell and the Columbia Broadcasting System. The latter employ the Lazarsfeld methods of measuring audience response and include analyses of single programs, of daytime soap operas, of Franklin D. Roosevelt's use of radio, and of public service programming, including one on anxieties raised by the atomic bomb. The mid-1950s to early 1960s are the high summer of Dichter's independent work. Reports from the London office first appear in 1958 and run through 1969. Beginning in 1968, German-language reports from the Zurich and then Frankfurt offices make up an increasing share of the total. By the early 1970s, the percentage of the proposals being rejected is increasing, and by the mid-1970s, the volume of business is much reduced. The proposals serve mainly to illuminate Dr. Dichter's ideas and how he sought to market them to potential clients. The reports, on the other hand, offer a rare, if somewhat skewed entry into the minds of ordinary consumers in the U.S., Western Europe, and to a lesser extent Canada, Mexico and Israel. Unfortunately around 1970, Dichter himself destroyed his original raw data, including the full records of his depth interviews and the identity of his test subjects. There is some supporting information only with the very last reports. The surviving extracts that Dichter worked into his reports are still important and often make fascinating or occasionally outrageous reading, but the researcher should always remember that what remains has passed through the filter of Dr. Dichter's own sensibilities. That said, Dichter was able to elicit rather candid responses from his subjects, in the case of the woman who used an interview on home cooking to tear into her nagging mother-in-law and (in her view) spoiled husband, unexpectedly so. Dichter also paid attention to class (as measured both by education and income) and racial/ethnic divisions in his research. To the extent that the nature and test market of the product allowed, Dichter would try to include the differing responses of minorities, including African Americans, Puerto Ricans, French Canadians and the like. He also tried to balance his samples by age and gender, although in the latter case, the researcher needs to be ever-mindful of his tendency to divide women into a few types based on the polarity of the "new" woman and the traditional homemaker. In addition to the regular finding aid, over 2,400 of the most interesting volumes have been cataloged individually in the Hagley Library's online public catalog at www.hagley.org/Library, where they can be searched by client name, brand name of product, type of consumer, or certain abstract categories. "Keyword" searches can be used to retrieve individual reports by number. A "keyword search" on "Ernest Dichter papers" can be used to retrieve all the reports, which may then be further sorted by date, language or other parameters.
