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OSR Staff
Lin Stork
Lin has more than 30 years of experience in survey research, became the Director of OSR in May, 2014, and was formerly IPPSR's Director of Survey Operations since 2006.
Prior to coming to MSU, Lin worked with other highly regarded survey organizations, directing national and statewide telephone and field studies at: the University of California - Berkeley Survey Research Center; Wilder Research (St. Paul, MN); the RAND Corporation (Santa Monica, CA); Westat (Rockville, MD); the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago; and Mathematica Policy Research (Princeton, NJ). Lin is responsible for all OSR projects and supervises all OSR staff. She continues to oversee the day-to-day operations of the Lab, recruitment and training of interviewers and supervisors working in the Lab, with the assistance from the Survey Research Lab managers. Lin can be reached at 517-353-1763 or storkl@msu.edu.
Delicia Solis
Delicia Solis is Assistant Director of Survey Operations at OSR. Del started working in the IPPSR/OSR Survey Research Lab as an interviewer in 2006 while pursuing her degree in Interdisciplinary Studies: Community Relations at MSU.
Del also worked as a Lab Supervisor and a Lab Manager; she has supervised up to 150 interviewers. She is a graduate of the IPPSR/OSR Survey Operations Skills Program (SOSP). In 2014, Del joined the Bureau of Sociological Research (BOSR) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln as an Interviewer Supervisor for the Behavior Risk Factor Surveillance Study (BRFSS). While at BOSR, she focused on English-Spanish translations, interviewer training, and quality assurance. In 2015, Del returned to MSU as a Survey Research Lab Manager. Del assists the OSR Director with the day-to-day operations of the Survey Research lab, conducts General Interviewer Trainings (GIT), CATI Training, project trainings, and Spanish trainings. Del can be reached at 517-353-9583 or solisdel@msu.edu.
Karen Clark
Karen Clark has been with OSR since 1989, and currently serves as a Senior Project Manager and Web Survey Coordinator.
Karen has programmed and managed hundreds of web surveys administered to tens of thousands of respondents, including projects overseas and in a variety of other languages. Karen has managed research projects in all modes including mixed mode studies. Her degree is in political science.
Karen can be reached at (517) 353-1764 or clarkk@msu.edu
Debra Rusz
She holds degrees in environmental sociology and wildlife management. She joined OSR in 1990 and has worked on a variety of telephone, mail and data entry projects.
Since 1997, her primary assignment has been the data and project manager for the annual Michigan Behavioral Risk Factor Survey (BRFS) and other BRFS-type surveys, such as the Asthma Follow-Up Survey, and the Cancer surveys. She has also been involved in statistical analysis and report writing for clients. Debra is available at (517) 353-1766 and ruszdebr@msu.edu.
Daniel Thaler
Daniel Thaler, Ph.D. has served as the Research Analyst at OSR since December 2015. His primary responsibilities include managing and analyzing survey datasets, and translating the statistical results into written reports and oral presentations for diverse audiences.
He received his doctorate and Master's degrees in American Political Behavior and Quantitative Research Methods from the Michigan State University Department of Political Science. His dissertation on spatial models of issue voting explored how the competition between symbolic emotional attachments and technical thought influences voters' preferences about candidates' issue positions in elections. He previously held the position of Visiting Assistant Professor at Michigan State, and has helped teach graduate-level research methods classes in the MSU Political Science department as well as the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) Summer Program in Ann Arbor. He is also involved in questionnaire design, programming web survey instruments, and project management. He can be reached at thalerd1@msu.edu.
Paul J. Lavrakas
Paul J. Lavrakas, PH.D. is OSR's Senior Research Fellow. Paul is a research psychologist, currently serving as a senior methodological research advisor for several public- and private-sector organizations in the U.S., Australia, Canada, and Japan.
He served as Vice President and chief methodologist for Nielsen Media Research from 2000-2007. He was tenured Full Professor of Journalism and Communication Studies at Northwestern University (1978-1996) and at Ohio State University (1996-2000), and the founding faculty director of the Northwestern University Survey Lab (1982-1996) and the OSU Center for Survey Research (1996-2000). Among his many publications, he has written a widely read book (Sage; 1987, 1993) and many handbook chapters (e.g., Elsevier, 2010; Cambridge U. Press, 2013) on telephone survey research methods; and is the editor/author of the Encyclopedia of Survey Research Methods (Sage; 2008), co-editor/author of Advances in Telephone Survey Methods (Wiley; 2008), co-editor/author of Online Panel Research: A Data Quality Perspective (Wiley; 2014), co-author of Qualitative Research Design: A Quality Framework Approach (Guilford; 2015), and lead editor and author for Experimental Methods in Survey Research: Techniques that Combine Random Sampling with Random Assignment (Wiley, forthcoming).