The Bureau of Sociological Research (BOSR) had a banner year! With over $2.1 million in revenue, almost 150 projects, and a growing professional staff in 2022-2023, BOSR had one of our most successful years ever. We served clients from UNL, UNMC, UNO, the University system, the State of Nebraska, and other organizations on a wide range of projects and topics. BOSR provided research support services for web, mail, and telephone surveys, observational studies in the field, and qualitative interviews and focus groups. In 2022, BOSR also expanded our data analysis services, hiring new project analysts to support our clients’ statistical analysis and reporting needs. BOSR’s interviewing staff is also at full capacity, with about 75 interviewers calling on BOSR’s telephone projects. One of BOSR’s long-term interviewer supervisors, Lejla Kulovac, won a College of Arts and Sciences staff Applause award for her dedicated work and service to BOSR. It’s been a big year.
To collect the highest quality data for our clients, BOSR consistently reevaluates our standard methods to ensure representation of the population at large and cost-effective data collection strategies for clients. With that in mind, BOSR is increasingly conducting mixed-mode surveys that include web with other more traditional modes of data collection such as mail and telephone surveys. Although internet access at home is prevalent, it is not universal. Not everyone who has internet access at home feels that their information is safe or private when communicated over a web survey. So that everyone has a chance to have their voice heard whether they have the internet at home or not, BOSR surveys offer multiple modes of data collection for participation. More details about seven of our mixed-mode surveys are highlighted in this report.
BOSR continued our partnership with the Nebraska Translator and Interpreter Core (NETIC) to translate surveys into languages other than English so that a wider range of Nebraskans can participate and be included in surveys. Internal BOSR research finds that Spanish-language surveys are completed by those who do not speak English at home and that those individuals tend to be different on characteristics measured in our studies from people who do speak English at home. Thus, expanding languages for BOSR surveys beyond English is important for inclusion and equity and in providing clients with high-quality data that more accurately reflects the population of interest. We are pleased to have supported the work of 51 translation projects – for BOSR surveys and the community at
large – over the last year.
Qualitative data collection provides insights into what participants think, feel, and do in detail that cannot be obtained through closed-ended survey questions. Although BOSR has long collected data through open-ended survey questions, we conducted a record number of in-depth interviews and focus groups to support our client needs this year. BOSR can conduct qualitative research and can provide support to qualitative researchers, including transcribing audio recordings, coding interviews and transcripts, or taking notes during interviews and focus groups. We did all of these types of projects over the last year.
Understanding what people and businesses think, feel, and do is the heart of our work. As we look toward our 60th year, we look forward to fulfilling BOSR’s mission of providing high-quality data for researchers, administrators, and policymakers at UNL and in the community.
Kristen Olson
Director, Bureau of Sociological Research