2005 Annual Report Norc Board of Trustees Janet L
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NORC AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO A national organization for research and computing 2005 ANNUAL REPORT NORC BOARD OF TRUSTEES JANET L. NORWOOD Senior Fellow and Counselor CRAIG G. COELEN New York Conference Board President Former Commissioner of Labor Statistics NORC RICHARD P. SALLER HARRY L. DAVIS Provost Roger L. and Rachel M. Goetz Edward L. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor Distinguished Service Professor Graduate School of Business Departments of History and Classics University of Chicago University of Chicago PHIL DEPOY STEPHEN M. STIGLER Professor Ernest DeWitt Burton Institute for Joint Warfare Analysis Distinguished Service Professor Naval Post Graduate School Department of Statistics Monterey, California University of Chicago JOHN MARK HANSEN JOSEPH P. SULLIVAN Dean, Division of the Social Sciences Retired Chairman of the Executive Committee Charles L. Hutchinson Distinguished Service Professor IMC Global Department of Political Science and the College University of Chicago JUDITH M. TANUR Distinguished Teaching Professor EDWARD O. LAUMANN (Chairman) Department of Sociology George Herbert Mead State University of New York at Stony Brook Distinguished Service Professor Department of Sociology and the College GAIL R. WILENSKY University of Chicago Former Administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration and EDWARD F. LAWLOR Presidential Advisor on Health Care Issues Dean Senior Fellow, Project HOPE George Warren Brown School of Social Work Washington University in St. Louis LIFE TRUSTEES JAMES L. MADARA Dean & Sara and Harold Lincoln Thompson ROBERT MCCORMICK ADAMS Distinguished Service Professor WILLIAM CANNON Biological Sciences Division and NATHAN KEYFITZ The Pritzker School of Medicine EVELYN KITAGAWA University Vice President for ARTHUR NIELSEN, JR. Medical Affairs DOROTHY RICE University of Chicago ELEANOR SHELDON JOHN W. MCCARTER, JR. President and Chief Executive Officer NORC OFFICERS The Field Museum Chicago, Illinois EDWARD O. LAUMANN Chairman ROBERT T. MICHAEL JOSEPH P. SULLIVAN Eliakim Hastings Moor Distinguished Service Professor Vice Chairman Harris School of Public Policy Studies University of Chicago CRAIG G. COELEN President RALPH W. MULLER JOHN THOMPSON Chief Executive Officer Secretary University of Pennsylvania Health System MARY JO ARDIZZONE Treasurer NORC is a national organization for research and computing at the University of Chicago—with offices on the University’s campus, in Chicago’s downtown Loop, and in Washington DC, Bethesda, NORC MD, and Berkeley, CA, as well as a nationwide field staff. NORC’s AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO clients include government agencies, educational institutions, foun- A national organization for dations, other nonprofit organizations, and private corporations. research and computing Although NORC’s national studies are the best known, our projects range across local, regional, and international perspectives as well. NORC creates unique value for its clients by developing effective, innovative solutions at the nexus of information technology and 2005 public interest research. Established in 1941, NORC was the first not-for-profit research firm created to pursue objective research ANNUAL REPORT that served a broadly conceived public interest. NORC has since emerged as an organization on the cutting edge of data collec- tion, management, and analysis technologies. Building on a cor- CONTENTS porate history of over sixty years of conducting objective research in the public interest, today NORC delivers focused research and 2 information technology solutions in support of social research. Letter from the Chairman and President NORC offers a full range of information technology, data collec- 5 tion, and analytic capabilities delivered in an integrated manner. Project Highlights NORC information technology capability includes applications 17 development; database development and warehousing; and pro- Major Issue Areas ject management, systems analysis, and quality control assurance. NORC data collection resources include questionnaire design and 28 survey methodology; telephone, in-person, and Internet data col- Survey Operations lection and data preparation; and world leadership in sample 31 design and weighting. NORC analysis capability includes a wide Academic Research Centers and range of both quantitative and qualitative techniques. Our long- University of Chicago Affiliation standing affiliation with the University of Chicago provides privi- leged access to the University’s world-renowned faculty. 36 Selected Clients NORC’s project work is done in an interdisciplinary framework, 37 with strong staff cooperation across substantive areas. NORC is an Selected Publications and equal opportunity employer committed to facilitating the person- Presentations al and professional development of everyone on our staff. Letter from the Chairman and President e are pleased to record 2005 as a year of significant accomplish- Wments at NORC. We continued important research collaborations with faculty at the University of Chicago, we launched significant new projects on very tight schedules, we implemented impor- tant advances in data collection technolo- gy, we brought significant new senior Edward O. Laumann, Craig G. Coelen, Chairman President researchers to our firm, we achieved high levels of survey productivity, and we achieved strong financial performance. In short, we made solid progress toward all of our long-term organizational goals. Throughout this report are examples of the application of new tools and technology in the exe- cution of complex data collection projects. In some cases, the tools were developed to meet the needs of a specific project – for example, a specialized “two-point discriminator” designed and fabricated for the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project to measure the tactile (touch) sensitivity of older adults. In other cases, existing technology was adapted for special use – for example, use of Global Positioning System (GPS) devices, cell phones, and mapping software to aid in locating rural addresses and the use of lightweight scanners by field interviewers to cap- ture data from household utility bills for the Residential Energy Consumption Survey. Among the most important developments at NORC in the past year was our successful recruitment of new senior research and administrative staff. Among the important additions are: • Mary Jo Ardizzone – Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Previously Mary Jo served as CFO at Environmental Systems Design and as corporate controller at Skidmore, Owings, Merrill. • Dan Black – Principal Investigator, 1997 Cohort of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth and senior fellow, Economics, Labor, and Population Studies Department. At Syracuse University, Dan served as Trustee Professor and for a time as Chair of the Economics Department and as Senior Research Associate at Syracuse’s Center for Policy Research. • Henry Brownstein – Senior Vice President and Director of the Substance Abuse, Mental Health, and Criminal Justice Department. He previously served as Director of the Center on Crime, Drugs, and Justice at Abt Associates and as Director of Drugs, Crime and Crime Research at the National Institute of Justice. • Julia Lane – Senior Vice President and Director, Economics, Labor, and Population Studies Department. Julia previously held senior research positions at the National Science Foundation, the Census Bureau, and the Urban Institute and was the architect and driving force behind the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics Project for Census. • Michael O’Grady – Senior Fellow in the Health Survey, Program, and Policy Research department and for the prior several years Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the Department of Health and Human Services. We have doubled in size in the last four years and have grown by 50 percent in the last two years. This growth has made organizational change a necessity. 2 In April 2005 NORC established an International Projects Department and recruited Jeff Telgarsky as Senior Vice President and founding director of the group. Jeff served for the previ- ous twelve years as director of the International Activities Center at the Urban Institute. During its first year, the new department took over the administration of our large project in Qatar, sup- porting that country’s expanding program of education reform. The department also provided methodological advice to the UK Department of Culture, Media, and Sport on the effectiveness of screening questions to identify problem gamblers. And NORC became lead in a consortium of organizations, including the Urban Institute and RAND, selected to carry out impact evalua- tions of the Millennium Challenge Corporation’s overseas development programs. The work will assess project contributions to economic growth, job creation, and household incomes, and to help guide the design of future programs. Planned in late 2005 and implemented in early 2006, NORC’s Health, Survey, Program, and Policy Research (HSPPR) Department, which had grown very rapidly in the last few years, was reorganized into three new departments. Dan Gaylin, previously HSPPR’s Senior Vice President and Director, became Executive Vice President for Health Research, and will oversee the newly formed departments: • Health Policy and Evaluation, led by Marc Berk, Senior Vice President and Director. • Public Health and Epidemiology, headed by Missy Koppelman, Senior Vice President and Director. • Health Care Delivery