Willem Egbert (Wim) Saris (born 8 July 1943) is a Dutch sociologist and Emeritus Professor of Statistics and Methodology, especially known for his work on "Causal modelling in non-experimental research"[1] and measurement errors (for example, MTMM analyses and development of the Survey Quality Predictor (SQP) program).
In 1998, he became member of the methodology group that facilitated the creation of the European Social Survey (ESS).
From 2009 to 2012, he was also director of the Research and Expertise Centre for Survey Methodology (RECSM) at the Pompeu Fabra University.
[citation needed] Over a long period, Saris was involved with Irmtraud Gallhofer in an applied research project studying political decision making on the basis of governmental meeting minutes and notes of advisers.
The result was that the decision makers were making relatively simple arguments with respect to serious and far-reaching outcomes of war and peace.
The final product was a procedure for detecting misspecification in these models taking into account the power of the tests.
In this context a decision aid, the Choice questionnaire, was developed by him in cooperation with Peter Neijens and Jan de Ridder.
Because of the lack of validity of the proposals for measurement instruments specified even by experts in the different fields, he created together with Irmtraud Gallhofer the three steps procedure for designing survey questions.
[citation needed] Probably the most important development in his research took place when he realized that one could never study the reliability and validity of all questions.
This program, called Survey Quality Predictor or SQP was first developed by him in MS-DOS and later transformed in a Windows version.
[citation needed] As a member of the CCT of the European Social Survey he became laureate of the Descartes Prize 2005, for the best collaborative research.