Now that the election is over, we know where the country stands on choosing a leader. But it’s still not all that clear what the collective wants on individual issues. There’s no doubt that polls guide policy, and that’s why the 2012 NORC Election Survey is important. It “was designed to measure public opinion about important issues the country faces – economic recovery, health care costs, and extreme partisanship,” and it is based on data collected both before and after the election. The survey is conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago (also known as the National Opinion Research Center), which is a Chicago, IL based non-profit organization that aims to “to conduct high-quality social science research in the public interest.” The organization was founded in 1941, and it has done research on a wide range of topics including Children and Youth, Criminal Justice, Economics, Education, Energy, Environment, Health, Human Development, International Development, Poverty, Security, Special Populations, Substance Abuse, and Sustainability.

Are You a NORC?

What I really like about NORC is that you can dive into their work on their website. They have a search engine of projects, so you can look through their work on topics that might interest you. Additionally, you’ll want to look over NORC’s Capabilities and their Data and Findings, but the most useful page that I found was NORC’s Wikipedia page. It gives a really nice breakdown of their most notable clients and projects. Spend some time reading through NORC’s work, and then if you like what you see, check out their Jobs page. NORC has some great openings for new and recent grads including:

• Graduate Research Assistant (Chicago, IL)
• Research Assistant (Chicago, IL)
• Research Assistant – International Projects Department (Bethesda, MD)
• Survey Specialist (Chicago, IL)
• Survey Statistician (Chicago, IL)
• Survey Methodologist (Chicago, IL)
• Phone Interviewer – NIS (Chicago, IL)

These jobs look fascinating, so take a look to see if you’re a fit for any of them.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

• NORC.org
• Jobs at NORC
• About NORC
• NORC’s History
• NORC’s Experts
• NORC’s Research
• NORC’s Annual Report
• NORC News

What have you heard about NORC at the University of Chicago?

We've identified NORC at the University of Chicago as having career opportunities in the following categories:

• all employers
• data
• Illinois
• Maryland
• math
• non-profit
• public policy
• research
• statistics

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