SSRS is comprised of a team of strong-minded, thoughtful individuals. We share a commitment to conducting the highest quality, most representative research. We each bring different passions and strengths to our work.

When we were growing up, we thought we might become doctors, teachers, baseball players, social workers, and journalists. While pursuing undergraduate and graduate degrees, SSRS team members studied English literature, religion, communications, political science, speech, finance, sociology, anthropology, survey methodology, and international relations. So how did we end up at SSRS? The common thread amongst our team is a natural curiosity that makes us each ask why? and how can we do that?

Of course, in doing our work, we often rely on our education and our interests. We are able to use our different educational backgrounds and expertise to create value for our clients. We help our clients create more effective survey instruments and develop solid survey research designs.

We are also committed to finding ways of providing quality solutions that are cost-effective. This commitment is born in part out of a desire to ensure that we are able to give a voice to populations that might otherwise be overlooked.

So what sets SSRS apart? Our clients tell us that they trust SSRS because we see ourselves as their partners. We care about their research as much as they do. Research -- it’s what we do best.

At Social Science Research Solutions, we tailor every project to our clients’ unique research needs, by providing expert data collection and analysis. The principal members of SSRS have long understood that the key to success is establishing true research partnerships with our clients and caring about the integrity of their data as if it were our own. We have a particularly strong track record of attaining representative samples of hard-to-reach populations. See Research Expertise for examples of collaborative research we have conducted across a broad band of subject areas.

We have partnered with sports entertainment leaders and experts in leisure behavior to better understand the rapidly changing trends in the sports world as well as the influence of technology and the choices that people make when choosing how and what forms of entertainment to seek out. At the heart of this research is the ESPN Sports Poll that is utilized by several major retail firms to segment sports fans and design marketing campaigns. SSRS also conducts ongoing tracking studies to identify and track important trends among Hispanic sports fans as part of the ESPN Spanish-language Sports poll, Deportes.

SSRS surveys support our media and academic partners’ ability to report on Americans’ attitudes and beliefs about a wide range of salient issues such as elections, political controversies, and government policies. As is often necessary in political research, SSRS can turn questionnaires into CATI programs and complete interviews within one or two days or however long the study specifications require and then provide data to our clients within a few hours after the last interview is recorded. The 2011 ABC News/Washington Post survey surrounding the new airport security policies and the Post’s Massachusetts Special Election Poll are examples of notable polls requiring rapid reaction and quick turnaround by SSRS.

We have also tracked election campaigns as they progress, through rolling cross-sectional design, such as the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s 2010 California survey. Through our omnibus EXCEL survey, we provide long-term tracking data such as Bloomberg’s Consumer Comfort Index.

Omnibus surveys are a cost-effective way to collect data from a representative random (RDD) sample. Among the advantages of the omnibus survey is its true RDD design. Each week, we interview 1,000 adults by dialing random samples of landline and cell phone numbers. By completing 300 cell phone interviews each week, we assure coverage of the growing share of the population that does not answer landline telephones. Interviews are conducted in both English and Spanish, so that the sample better represents the Hispanic population. The omnibus approach enables clients to share survey costs by combining their questions with other clients’ questions while maintaining exclusivity in their subject area. All clients receive full demographic information (including gender, age, education, and race), geographic information, socio-economic information (income and home-ownership) as well as household composition, party identification, political ideology and religion for all completed interviews.

Survey research is faced with a tremendous challenge due to the dramatic increase in the population that now no longer owns a landline telephone. In nearly all of its studies, SSRS overcomes these challenges by employing a dual frame (cell phone and landline interviewing) design or through address-based sampling (ABS). Typically, the ABS studies that we conduct feature multimodal designs incorporating mail, telephone (both landline and cell), and web completes. Solutions to the issue of wireless-only households are tailored to the unique population being studied, depending on characteristics such as the population’s age, ethnicity or geographic location. SSRS has accrued a body of experience in these areas, having conducted dual-frame designs and address-based hybrid designs in surveys of the general population, Hispanics, areas of high African American density, parents of young children, and young adults.

Some clients require straightforward cross tabulations of the data; others need extensive statistical analyses or complete reports that leave no stone unturned. We have found that the most critical aspect of becoming true research partners with our clients is tailoring the deliverables for each client and to each project. We develop deliverables based on understanding what clients envision. Then, we strive to reach and exceed these expectations. We will work to make sure that you get exactly what you need at the conclusion of each project to find the compelling story in your data.

Providing quality project management is the cornerstone of SSRS’s work. From beginning to end, every project we manage is overseen by a staff of highly engaged professionals. We work as a team – combining the expertise of our project staff and operations managers – in order to ensure that each project will attain the goals set by our clients. Routinely, we initiate projects with a kickoff meeting where the specific details of the project are reviewed and key client objectives are made known to the entire internal team. Project staff meets regularly to review the status of each project while it is in the field. As part of our standard operating procedures, every project receives: a close review of each instrument for quality; in-depth interviewer briefing and training; continuous interview monitoring; checking of data; and daily review of sample integrity. We also provide detailed reports to clients on the status of their research, often including interim response rates, cooperation rates, and incidences.

SSRS leads the industry with our innovative sample designs. We pride ourselves both offering several design options for every project and in walking our clients through each design's strengths and weaknesses. Indeed, on more than one occasion, we have had clients tell us they learned more about sampling through their partnership with us than they had known prior to our collaborative efforts! At SSRS, we design our own samples and benefit from having the invaluable resource of our sister company, Marketing Systems Group (MSG), one of the largest sample providers in the world. We have developed unique and complex designs and have reported on their efficacy in a range of publications, on topics such as the pros and cons of surname-based Hispanic designs and the impact of cell phone only households. SSRS also conducts national telephone research in a cost-effective omnibus study format.

With an eye toward maximizing survey validity and reliability, we work to strengthen the countless questionnaires that we field. Our experience in reviewing hundreds of instruments over the past ten years offers us uncommon expertise in performing these critical tasks. Depending on our clients' needs, we can simply review the instrument and provide feedback, or collaborate in developing the questionnaire from the ground up. We provide detailed recommendations for perfecting survey instruments throughout the pretesting phase of questionnaire design to ensure that the highest quality instrument goes into the field.

SSRS partners with the nation’s leading researchers in the area of religion and faith to conduct studies of both the general population and specific ethnic and religious groups. On behalf of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, SSRS has conducted several ground-breaking surveys including the U.S. Religious Knowledge Study and Mormons in America. Working together with Harvard University to conduct the Faith Matters Survey, SSRS has interviewed thousands of Americans about both their religion, including beliefs and behaviors, and their social and political engagement. This longitudinal study includes repeated contacts made with a subset of households over the past six years. Other religion research carried out by SSRS includes the Hispanic Religion Study for the Pew Hispanic Center.

Together with our research partner, Ukeles Associates, Inc. (UAI), SSRS is at the forefront of Jewish community research. In 2009, SSRS and Ukeles Associates, Inc. (UAI) established a strategic alliance, Jewish Policy and Action Research (JPAR), in order to provide Jewish communities with a full-service product including both data collection and analysis. JPAR has gained a reputation for accuracy in determining population estimates and measuring attitudes and behaviors within Jewish communities of all sizes across the U.S. Since 1996, JPAR team members have collectively been responsible for conducting 22 Jewish community studies, including more large-city studies than any other research entity. Over the past several years, JPAR has conducted large-scale studies in New York, Cleveland, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Chicago.

SSRS is an industry leader in conducting research addressing health care access, coverage, and quality. Our ongoing partnership with the Urban Institute and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has allowed policy makers and researchers in Massachusetts to track the effect of the state’s unique health insurance legislation. SSRS also partners with the State Health Access Data Assistance Center (SHADAC) to conduct several state-wide studies each year and works with SHADAC to develop and test research innovations aimed at improving the quality of health access studies. We have conducted state-wide surveys in California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oregon, and large-scale healthcare surveys in Houston and the District of Columbia. In addition, organizations such as the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health regularly turn to SSRS for their survey research needs as they study the role of health care and health insurance in American public life.

At SSRS, we conduct numerous studies every year focusing on health crises and both acute and chronic health problems facing the U.S. Following the 2009 breakout of H1N1 influenza, SSRS fielded more than 15 surveys on behalf of the Harvard School of Public Health, tracking public reaction in real-time as the public health emergency unfolded. Our data have been used to advise policymakers on preparing for wide scale disasters such as foodborne diseases or biological terrorist attacks. Researchers at the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania rely on SSRS’s data to track the impact of campaigns aimed at reducing health-risks such as smoking and consuming sugared soft drinks. Our public health surveys range from quick-turnaround one-day phone polls to extended-field multi-mode surveys of unique populations.

We are experienced in studying older Americans - a rapidly growing segment of the population. Our work with older Americans has focused on vitally important issues such as retirement, quality of life, Medicare insurance, and Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage. Recently, SSRS conducted a survey of Americans over the age of 50 regarding their expectations for retirement and compared these expectations with the experiences of retirees. SSRS has worked with AARP for over 25 years, conducting studies specific to their members as well as about the general population. We also have a long-term relationship with the AdvantAge Initiative, a data-driven community development project that helps communities measure their elder-friendliness and develop strategies to sustain older residents’ independence and allow them to "age in place."

SSRS addresses the challenges presented by conducting research with young people - a group that has traditionally been difficult to reach. We use methodologies that maximize the likelihood of contacting and obtaining the true opinions of teens and young adults in an efficient and cost-conscious way. Our studies of young Americans have ranged from sensitive issues such as teenage pregnancy and uninsurance, to popular culture concerns such as video game use and sports fandom.

Our team has a wealth of experience researching a variety of ethnically and culturally distinct populations. As the primary research partner for the Pew Hispanic Center, SSRS has conducted the annual National Survey of Latinos since 1999. We have conducted wide scale surveys for clients such as The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and the Washington Post comparing attitudes and experiences of white Americans with those of African-Americans and Hispanics. Our health studies have focused on populations such as American-Indians/Alaska Natives, Asian-Americans and subpopulations within these groups (such as Chinese or Vietnamese). In order to access these groups, it is essential to have the capability to speak with respondents in their native languages. In just the past few years, we have conducted interviews in Spanish, French, Dutch, Tagalog, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Japanese, Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, and Portuguese.

We are well known for our high levels of proficiency in conducting research among low-incidence populations including, but not limited to, Hispanics, Asian Americans, people with various religions, teenagers, young adults, persons with specific health conditions, those without health insurance, parents of children in various types of schooling, HR directors, military veterans, and even spouses of persons currently serving in the military. To do so, we employ complex yet representative sampling methods to attain reliable and valid results. As part of our toolkit, we are often able to provide pre-screened sample of low incidence populations from our weekly omnibus that can make research among low-incidence and hard-to-reach populations affordable and more representative than might be attainable with traditional sampling designs.