Formation | 1941 |
---|---|
Type | Private, nonprofit organization |
Purpose | Research |
Headquarters | Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
Parent organization | University of Chicago |
Website | norc |
Formerly called | National Opinion Research Center |
NORC at the University of Chicago, previously the National Opinion Research Center, is an independent social research organization in the United States. Established in 1941, its corporate headquarters is located in downtown Chicago, with offices in several other locations throughout the United States. Organized as an independent corporation, more than half its board comes from faculty and administration of the University of Chicago. It also jointly staffs some of the university's academic research centers. [1]
The organization was founded by researcher Harry Field in 1941 as the "National Opinion Research Center", with financial support from department-store heir and newspaper owner Marshall Field III (no relation) and the University of Denver, where it was located. [2] The center moved to the University of Chicago in 1947. Since its founding, NORC at the University of Chicago has conducted numerous social research projects involving opinion surveys, panel surveys, and marketing research. It also has conducted other data collection efforts for government agencies, nonprofit agencies, and corporations.
Data from surveys are also often analyzed in a wide range of social sciences, especially sociology. NORC is best known for its large, national surveys, but has also conducted qualitative and quantitative analyses, longitudinal analyses, methodological studies, and international projects.
NORC clients have included:
In October 2023, United States Department of Labor and NORC reached a conciliation agreement to resolve alleged hiring discrimination against Asian applicants for positions as coronavirus contact tracers between May 2020 to August 2021. NORC agreed to pay $95,000 in back wages and interest to 107 Asian applicants and also review its hiring policies, procedures, and trainings so they are free from discrimination in accordance to Executive Order 11246. [25]
The Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) is a statistical survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. The SIPP is designed to provide accurate and comprehensive information about the incomes of American individuals and households and their participation in income transfer programs.
The General Social Survey (GSS) is a sociological survey created in 1972 by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago and funded by the National Science Foundation. The GSS collects information biannually and keeps a historical record of the concerns, experiences, attitudes, and practices of residents of the United States.
Westat is an employee-owned professional services corporation located in Rockville, Maryland. It provides research services to government agencies and businesses. The corporation conducts research studies in behavioral health & health policy, clinical trials, education, public health & epidemiology, social policy & economics and transportation.
The National Longitudinal Surveys (NLS) are a set of surveys sponsored by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) of the U.S. Department of Labor. These surveys have gathered information at multiple points in time on the labor market experiences and other significant life events of several groups of men and women. Each of the NLS samples consists of several thousand individuals, many of whom have been surveyed over several decades.
The National Survey of Health & Development is a Medical Research Council (MRC) longitudinal survey of people born in Britain in March 1946. It is "the longest continually running major birth cohort study in the world and is one of the longest-running studies of human development. "
Sociologists use the concept of occupational prestige to measure the relative social-class positions people may achieve by practicing a given occupation. Occupational prestige results from the consensual rating of a job - based on the belief of that job's worthiness. The term prestige itself refers to the admiration and respect that a particular occupation holds in a society. Occupational prestige is prestige independent of particular individuals who occupy a job. Sociologists have identified prestige rankings for more than 700 occupations based on results from a series of national surveys. They have created a scale and then rank given occupations based on survey results.
The International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) is a collaboration between different nations conducting surveys covering topics which are useful for social science research. The ISSP researchers develop questions which are meaningful and relevant to all countries which can be expressed in an equal manner in different languages. The results of the surveys provide a cross-national and cross-cultural perspective to individual national studies. By 2021, 58 countries have already taken part in the ISSP.
The Health and Retirement Study (HRS) is a longitudinal survey of a representative sample of Americans over age 50 conducted by the Survey Research Center (SRC) at the Institute for Social Research (ISR) at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and supported by the National Institute on Aging (NIA). The study interviews approximately 20,000 respondents every two years on subjects like health care, housing, assets, pensions, employment and disability. The study is managed through a cooperative agreement between the NIA, which provides primary funding, and the ISR, which administers and conducts the survey. Beginning in 2012, HRS began adding genetic information from consenting participants to its database. The economic measures captured by the data in the HRS are regarded as being of very high quality.
James A. Davis (1929–2016) was a distinguished American sociologist who is best known as a pioneer in the application of quantitative statistical methods to social science research and teaching. Most recently, he was a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Chicago.
The Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) is a longitudinal panel survey of American families, conducted by the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan.
Professor Wei-Jun Jean Yeung is a Taiwanese sociologist and demographer, now is the professor of Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. She chairs the Family, Children, and Youth Research Cluster in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences in NUS.
The Making Connections Survey is a neighborhood-based, longitudinal and cross-sectional survey funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. It serves as an evaluation of a larger initiative supported by the foundation and was designed to collect data measuring how neighborhood change affects the well-being of children. The Making Connections Survey was conducted by National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago between 2002 and 2011 with residents in ten low-income communities across the United States. The final survey dataset includes responses from roughly 28,000 interviews at three points in time.
High School and Beyond (HS&B) is a longitudinal study of a nationally representative sample of people who were high school sophomores and seniors in 1980. The study was originally funded by the United States Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) as a part of their Secondary Longitudinal Studies Program. NORC at the University of Chicago, then known as the National Opinion Research Center, developed the sample design and performed the data collection for the study. The study surveyed students from over 1,000 public and private high schools on their cognitive and non-cognitive skills, high school experiences, work experiences, and future plans. Baseline surveys were administered in 1980, with follow-up surveys in 1982, 1984, 1986, 1992 (sophomores), 2014 (sophomores), and 2015 (seniors).
Edward Otto Laumann is an American sociologist. He is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. Laumann earned his Ph.D. in the Harvard Department of Social Relations in 1964, where he worked with George Homans, Talcott Parsons, and Harrison White. He served as Dean of the social sciences and Provost at Chicago. He is best known for his work on social stratification, urban sociology, organizational sociology, health and aging, and is widely recognized as a pioneer in the areas of social network analysis and the sociology of sexuality. In 2013, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The Joint Program in Survey Methodology was established at the University of Maryland, College Park in 1993, a collaboration between that University, the University of Michigan, and Westat. Today JPSM offers coursework on-site and online, offering MS and Ph.D. degrees, certificate programs, and short courses on the subjects of Survey Methodology, Survey Statistics, and Data Science.
Patricia Ruggles is an economist and social statistician who studies poverty. Formerly the chief economist at the United States Department of Health and Human Services, she is now a Senior Fellow at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.
Kerwin Kofi Charles is the Indra K. Nooyi Dean and Frederic D. Wolfe Professor of Economics, Policy, and Management at the Yale School of Management. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and an elected Fellow of the Society of Labor Economists. He has been chair of the Board of trustees of NORC, serves on the board of trustees of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, is a member of the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee, and sits on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Labor Economics. He was previously the Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor of the Harris School of Public Policy at The University of Chicago, and was a professor at the University of Michigan from 1995 - 2006.
The Carolina Population Center (CPC) is an interdisciplinary research center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. CPC was established in 1966. The primary goals of the center are to conduct research on population, health, aging, and the environment, and share data and findings that push the field forward and train the next generation of population scholars.
Susan Schechter Bortner is an American survey statistician, formerly in US Government service and now a researcher at NORC at the University of Chicago, a private nonprofit social research organization.