Welcome to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Program in Survey Research and Methodology and the UNL Gallup Research Center.
SRAM is officially affiliated to the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Business Administration. As appropriate for a strongly interdisciplinary program, our faculty have backgrounds in Statistics, Survey Science, Sociology, Cognitive Psychology, Marketing, Political Science, Linguistics, and Educational Psychology. We are thus ideally situated to meet the needs of students interested in working in a wide range of public, academic, and private sector organizations.
The Survey Research and Methodology program offers MS and PhD programs as well as a Certificate Program.
The Gallup Organization also offers a special Fellowship opportunity at the UNL Gallup Research Center and supports scholarships for promising applicants to SRAM degrees.
SRAM Alumni Mario Callegaro & Ana Villar now working in London
Husband and wife Phd Alumnus Mario Callegaro & Ana Villar recently relocated from Mountain View, California to London. Mario continues his work as a survey research scientist for the quantitative marketing team at Google. Ana was working at Stanford as research associate with Professor Jon Krosnick. In London Ana got a position at City University as Research Fellow, working for the European Social Survey.
“The main reason we moved,” say Mario & Ana “is to be closer to our families, even if it meant leaving the USA, a land that has treated us extremely kindly. We really enjoy living in London and travelling is a breeze; we quickly adjusted to the city life without a car. We get to walk a lot and that is great.”
Mario continues: “I had to adjust to a different working style. Having most of my team and my manager in Mountain View changes your schedule. I now go to work late and leave late so I can have some hours of overlap with California. One advantage is that until 4pm I receive almost no emails and I have no meetings. That makes you concentrate and get stuff done. When I was working in Mountain View emails kept coming all day long and it was challenging to concentrate on other tasks! I am also focusing on joining the local networks and professional associations. I just joined the Royal Statistical Society and its social research section and also the Market Research Society.”
Ana has joined the Centre for Comparative Social Surveys to lead the Mixed-Mode Methodology Programme, which intends to investigate the feasibility of introducing multiple modes of data collection on this rigorous survey without compromising its quality and cross-national comparability. She is also overseeing the use of an 'innovation sample' to test the quality of new and existing questions, and is part of a team developing an interactive online tool which documents the translation process for items fielded on the ESS “I really like my job at City,” says Ana. “It is a great environment where we seek excellence in survey research, which perfectly aligns with the standards and practices we learned at SRAM. I miss my job and colleagues at Stanford but I am adjusting really well to my new position.”
NSF Grant
SRAM Professor Allan McCutcheon (at left) and SRAM colleagues Bob Belli, Kristen Olson, Jolene Smyth and Leen-Kiat Soh (Computer Science & Engineering), have received a National Science Foundation Census Research Network (NCRN) grant in the amount of more than $2.9 million for their proposal titled “Reducing Error in Computerized Survey Data Collection.” Their research will focus on improving survey designs/instruments while enhancing data quality by reducing both interviewer and respondent burden. Collaborations among the Survey Research and Methodology Program, the Gallup Organization and AbtSRBI Inc. will be critical to accomplish the proposed goals and objectives. This unique cohort ensures that the proposed project will be carried out with optimal efficiency and quality.
Watch a video of the grant announcement at celebration, hosted at the Gallup Organization's headquarters in Omaha, here.More information about this and other NCRN grants can be found online at: http://www.census.gov/NCRN/
AAPOR Video
Recently three students from the SRAM program won the first annual AAPOR Video Contest. Bryan Parkhurst, Patrick Johnson and Adam Swift submitted their video, "The Total Survey Error: Data Mayhem" in hopes of besting the rest of the field...they did just that. (Click the image at left to view the video)
"The Total Survey Error: Data Mayhem video came about from a class project. Instead of writing a final paper, Dr. Smyth offered the students the opportunity to create a video on something related to the course (Data Collection Methods) with the possibility of entering it in the recently announced AAPOR Video Contest. The three of us quickly jumped on board and started pitching ideas back and forth. I don’t recall exactly how we came to the idea of parodying Dean Winter’s Mayhem character from the All State insurance ads, but I do remember the three of us going straight to Dr. Smyth when we got the idea. She really liked it and signed off on the idea, and from there we started coming up with ideas for how to represent aspects of survey error by our version of Mayhem. We shot the whole video at the SRAM offices and a casting call of SRAM students nabbed us the gracious acting skills of fellow SRAM student Lynn Philips. All editing was done by us at the UNL Love Library media lab.
"The video contest was new for the AAPOR 2012 conference. In a video created by the judging committee, current AAPOR President Scott Keeter describes it as “the first, and possibly the last AAPOR Video Contest." The submission deadline was April 1st (oh survey people). It was about a month later that we got word the judging committee chose Total Survey Error: Data Mayhem for first place. While all three of us had hoped the judges would like the video, we never imagined we’d actually get first place. We certainly couldn’t have done it without the SRAM faculty and students who all helped us along the way. Maybe this will be the start of SRAM being the Hollywood of survey research videos. If we get alumni mailings 10 years from now saying “Survey Research and Methodology Program…and Film Studio” we’ll be quite proud."
Submitted by Bryan Parkhurst, SRAM PhD Student
SRAM MS Student Receives MAPOR Fellows Paper Award
This year the MAPOR Fellows debuted a second student paper competition category focusing on survey research methodology thanks to generous funding from Paul Lavrakas and Allan McCutcheon. SRAM MS student Brian Wells was presented the award for his paper entitled “Accounting for Nonresponse in the Nebraska Behavioral Health Consumer Survey.”
Brian wrote the paper in conjunction with his assistantship at the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, Division of Behavioral Health last year. His paper illustrated how nonresponse adjustments can potentially improve estimates in their annual consumer survey. Professor Kristen Olson served as his faculty mentor on the paper. “It was a shock and an honor to win this award. I know there were a lot of good student presentations this year, but I am proud to represent the University of Nebraska, and the SRAM program, with winning the award.”
