Career
He is a fellow at the Carolina Population Center, the American Statistical Association 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.
Bollen joined University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in 1985.
He is the author of several books and over a hundred of papers. His best known publication, Structural Equations with Latent Variables, has been cited over 14,000 times, it integrated diverse literature from several disciplines to help define the area of structural equation modeling (SEMs).
According to the National Science Foundation, "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.
