The Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan

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The Survey Research Center (SRC)

The Survey Research Center is the largest of the four Centers of the Institute for Social Research (ISR). For more than 50 years, the Survey Research Center has been a national and international leader in interdisciplinary social science research involving the collection or analysis of data from scientific sample surveys. First, this involves conducting basic and applied empirical survey-based research that is theoretically informed.  SRC and the Institute for Social Research are pillars of empirical social science, but seek to bring their empiricism to bear on problems that are of both social and scientific importance. Second, but no less important, SRC's leadership involves the development, refinement, and propagation of the scientific method of survey research through teaching and training.

The research programs of the SRC are in continuing evolution. From the initial four programs in the 1940s and 1950s -- economic behavior, political behavior, organizational behavior, and survey methodology -- the SRC has grown to include a wide array of active research programs including:

  • Economic Behavior
  • Family & Demography
  • Life Course Development
  • Quantitative Methodology
  • Social Environment & Health
  • Socio-environmental Studies
  • Social Indicators
  • Survey Methodology
  • Urban & Environmental Studies
  • Youth and Social Issues

Each program is a national and international leader in theory and research in its respective area. Collectively the research programs have spawned, at a rate of about one per decade, a set of continuing major national data resources for social research and social policy: (1) the Survey of Consumer Attitudes; (2) the Panel Study of Income Dynamics; (3) the Monitoring the Future study of high school youth; (4) the Health and Retirement Study; (5) the Retirement Research Center; (6) the National Survey of Family Growth; and (7) the Youth, Education, and Society program.

The Division of Surveys and Technologies (DST) is the operations branch of the Survey Research Center, providing a range of services in the areas of survey and statistical design, collection and processing of survey and other data, qualitative data collection, and data analysis. DST is comprised of four technical sections: Data Collection and Processing Services, Project Services, Research Design & Development, and Survey Design & Analysis. Together they provide technical services to ISR, as well as to other departments within the University and organizations outside the University.

SRC Offers...

  • Multidisciplinary expertise for survey design and administration
  • Sophisticated methodology and technology
  • Research specialists in areas of current interest to planners and policymakers
  • Consultation and other services directed to any component of survey design and analysis

SRC Conducts...

  • Multidisciplinary studies of the beliefs, attitudes, values, environment, and behavior of groups, organizations, and individuals in selected roles and settings
  • Interdisciplinary survey research
  • Methodological research
  • Surveys of large populations or of special sub-populations
  • Face-to-face or telephone interviewing for surveys of national, state, regional, or local populations
 

   
SRC Director's Office
Survey Research Center
1355 ISR Building
P.O. Box 1248
Ann Arbor, MI 48106
Phone: 734-764-8365

  

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