Ernest Watson Burgess (May 16, 1886 – December 27, 1966) was a Canadian-American urban sociologist born in Tilbury, Ontario. He was educated at Kingfisher College in Oklahoma and continued graduate studies in sociology at the University of Chicago. In 1916, he returned to the University of Chicago, as a faculty member. Burgess was hired as an urban sociologist at the University of Chicago. Burgess also served as the 24th President of the American Sociological Association (ASA).
Scholarly work
Burgess conducted influential work in a number of areas.
Introductory sociology textbook
Five years after his arrival as a professor at the University of a Chicago in 1921, Ernest Burgess would publish one of his most celebrated works. He collaborated with sociologist Robert Park to write a textbook called Introduction to the Science of Sociology (Park & Burgess, 1921). This was one of the most influential sociology texts ever written. Many people at the time referred to this book as the "Bible of Sociology". This book represented the observation and reflection of men who have seen life from very different points of view. The book discussed many topics such as the history of sociology, human nature, investigating problems, social interaction, competition, conflicts, assimilation and more.
Overturning the arguments of a still ascendant eugenics movement, Burgess and Park argued that social disorganization, not heredity, is the cause of disease, crime and other characteristics of slum life. As the passage of successive waves of immigrants through such districts demonstrated, it is the slum area itself, and not the particular group living there, with which social pathologies are associated.
Introduction to the Science of Sociology was so well organized and comprehensive that most graduate students taught by University of Chicago alumni were required to read it. This book was so informative that it was still being used decades after the death of Ernest Burgess.
Concentric zone model
Burgess' groundbreaking research, in conjunction with his colleague, Robert E. Park, provided the foundation for The Chicago School. In The City (Park, Burgess, & McKenzie, 1925) they conceptualized the city into the concentric zones (Concentric zone model), including the central business district, transitional (industrial, deteriorating housing), working-class residential (tenements), residential, and commuter/suburban zones. They also viewed cities as something that experiences evolution and change, in the Darwinian sense.
Burgess method of unit-weighted regression
In the field of criminology, Burgess conducted work on predicting the success or failure of inmates on parole. He identified 21 measures believed to be associated with success on parole, converting these measures to a score of zero or one, with a score of one associated with parole success. For example, a man lacking in job skills would have a score of zero, while a man with job skills would have a score of one. He then added the scores to obtain a scale in which higher scores predicted a greater chance of success on parole (Burgess, 1928). Burgess has been credited with the birth of actuarial dangerousness prediction (Harcourt, 2006)
The results showed that the scale worked well. To illustrate, for men with the highest scores from 14 to 21, the rate of parole success was 98%; for men with scores of 4 or less, the rate of parole success was only 24%. This method of combining scores has come to be called the Burgess method of unit-weighted regression. Hakeem (1948) reported that the Burgess method had "remarkable accuracy in prediction". Though more advanced methods of analysis have become common in the social sciences (such as multiple regression), they have yet to show a clear advantage over unit-weighted methods, so the Burgess method is still used in criminology.