Daniel Yankelovich; author, pollster

Daniel Yankelovich, a pollster and author who spent decades charting emerging trends among the public and whose insights helped shape corporate marketing decisions and government policy, died Sept. 22 at his home in San Diego. He was 92.

His death was confirmed by the University of California at San Diego, which established a social science research institute in his name. The cause was reportedly kidney failure.

Public polling had been around long before Yankelovich entered the field in the 1950s, but he brought a special emphasis on psychology and philosophy that sought to bring a human dimension to his findings.

After founding his first polling company in 1958, Yankelovich, focused primarily on business and advertising rather than on that political polling for which some of his counterparts, including Louis Harris and George Gallup, were famous.

Yankelovich sought to gauge how the postwar American public would respond to imported products and to advertising campaigns, particularly on television. He helped popularize the term "baby boomers" to define a new and distinct youth market in the 1960s.

By the early 1970s, many leading companies were among his clients, including Dow Chemical, Volkswagen, General Electric, AT&T, Procter & Gamble and IBM. Yankelovich also formed a partnership with the New York Times to conduct polling in politics and other issues.

In 1975, he established the Public Agenda Foundation with Cyrus Vance, in an effort to put public officials in touch with ordinary citizens in determining public policy. Vance later became secretary of state under President Jimmy Carter.