Survey Research and Experimental Designs

by Paul J. Lavrakas (Editor), Michael W. Traugott (Editor)

120 pages, Paperback

First published December 20, 2005

About the author

Paul J. Lavrakas, Ph.D., is a research psychologist (Loyola University of Chicago; 1975, 1977) and currently is serving as a methodological research consultant for several public-sector and private-sector organizations. He served as vice president and chief methodologist for Nielsen Media Research from 2000 to 2007. Previously, he was a professor of journalism and communication studies at Northwestern University (1978–1996) and at Ohio State University (1996–2000). During his academic career he was the founding faculty director of the Northwestern University Survey Lab (1982–1996) and the OSU Center for Survey Research (1996–2000). Prior to that he was a fifth grade teacher in the inner-city of Chicago (1968–1972) and helped established a social science evaluation research unit for Westinghouse in 1976– 1977. Among his publications, he has written two editions of a widely read book on telephone survey methodology (1987, 1993) and served as the lead editor for three books on election polling, the news media, and democracy (1991, 1995, 1999), as well as co-authoring four editions of The Voter’s Guide to Election Polls (1996, 2000, 2004, 2008). He served as guest editor for a special issue of Public Opinion Quarterly on “Cell Phone Numbers and Telephone Surveys” published in December, 2007, and chaired a task force for the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) which issued a report in 2008 on this topic (www.aapor.org).

Dr. Lavrakas was a co-recipient of the 2003 AAPOR Innovators Award for his work on the standardization of survey response rate calculations, was named a Fellow of the Midwestern Association for Public Opinion Research (MAPOR) in 1995, and was recognized in 2007 with an Outstanding Career Achievement Award by the New York Association for Public Opinion Research (NYAAPOR). He has been elected twice to the AAPOR Executive Council as Program Chair (1997–1999) and Counselor at Large (2008 2010).

Dr. Lavrakas was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was educated in the public schools of Birmingham, Michigan. His undergraduate degree is from Michigan State University. His wife of 40 years, Barbara J. Lavrakas, and he live in Connecticut; their son, Nikolas J. Lavrakas, is a resident of Perth, Australia.