Minutes

ESRA Committee Elections 2011

In agreement with the constitution of the European Survey Research Association, elections for the new ESRA Committee will be held during the Lausanne 2011 Conference.

Proposals for candidates can be made by any ESRA member. If you would like to suggest a candidate, please send their abbreviated CV to esra@sqp.nl and indicate the position they would be running for.

The current candidates are the following:

For the position of President:

Patrick Sturgis (personal website)

Patrick Sturgis’ current position is Professor of Research Methodology in the Department of Social Statistics at the University of Southampton. Prior to joining Southampton, he spent seven years in the department of sociology at the University of Surrey and three years in the Survey Methods Centre at the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen).

His research interests are in the areas of public opinion and political behaviour, particularly with regard to social and political trust and social capital. He also has interests in processes of inter and intra-generational social mobility and public attitudes towards and engagement with science and technology. Methodologically, his interests are in the areas of survey methodology, particularly the psychological dimensions of survey measurement, and statistical modelling, with a focus on structural equation models and models for the analysis of repeated measures data. He has published widely in leading journals in these areas.

He is currently Director of the UK National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM) and co-director of the ESRC Survey Resources Network. He is Principal Investigator of the Wellcome Monitor of Public Attitudes, Knowledge, and Engagement in Biomedical Science and Chair the Methodological Advisory Committee for the Understanding Society survey, the largest household panel survey in the world. He is also Chair of the Scientific Committee of the European Survey Research Association (ESRA), responsible for the scientific programme of the 4th ESRA conference to be held in Lausanne, 18-22 July 2011.

For the position of General Secretary:

Nick Allum (personal website)

Nick Allum is Senior Lecturer in Empirical Sociology at the University of Essex. He earned his PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science and his graduate work was on the public perception of risk in relation to gene technology. Nick’s research is in survey methodology, social and political trust and on attitudes, beliefs and knowledge about science and technology. Nick directs a new Masters degree in Survey Methods at the University of Essex and is a co-investigator on the major ESRC Survey Resources Network initiative.

For a position as Committee Member:

Jelke G. Bethlehem (personal website)

Jelke G. Bethlehem studied mathematical statistics at the University of Amsterdam. After obtaining his predoctoral degree he was employed as Research Worker at the Statistical Department of the Mathematical Centre in Amsterdam. His work concentrated on multivariate statistical analysis and development of statistical software.

In 1978 he joined the Department for Statistical Methods of Statistics Netherlands, first as Research Worker and later as Senior Statistician. His main topics were the treatment of nonresponse in sample surveys, in which he obtained his Ph.D., and disclosure control of published survey data. From 1987 to 1996 he was head of the Statistical Informatics Department (a research unit within the Division of Research and Development), which developed standard software for processing survey data. Import products were the Blaise System for computer-assisted survey data collection and data processing, the Abacus package for tabulation packages, and the Bascula package for weighting sample survey data.

Currently, he is Senior Survey Methodologist of the Methodology Department of Statistics Netherlands. He is in involved in research projects in the area of survey methodology (nonresponse, web surveys). He is also involved in European research projects. He is also part-time professor in Statistical Information Processing at the University of Amsterdam.

Frauke Kreuter (personal website)

Frauke Kreuter is an associate professor of survey methodology at the University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA and head of the Statistical Methods Centre at the Institute for Employment Research (IAB), Nuremberg, Germany. Before joining JPSM she held a Adjunct Professor Position at the Department of Statistics at the University of California, Los Angeles. She received her PhD in 2001 at the University in Konstanz. Her current research interests focus possibilities of using paradata to address nonresponse and measurement error issues. Her broader interests span the role of interviewers in the data collation processes and trade offs in survey designs. Frauke Kreuter serves as Associate Editor for the Journal of Official Statistics, the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society – A, Survey Research Methods and the Stata Journal. She has served on expert panels and tasks forces for various U.S. government agencies and is currently member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Statistic Sweden.

Matthias Schonlau (personal website)

Matthias Schonlau studied statistics in Ulm, Germany, and obtained his Ph.D. in Waterloo, Canada in 1997. He spent two years as a post doctoral fellow with AT&T Labs and the National Institute of Statistical Sciences in the USA (1997-1999). He has been with the RAND Corporation for 14 years in the USA (1999-2011), including 9 years as the head of the statistical consulting service. In 2009/2010, he spent one year with the SOEP department of the DIW in Berlin, Germany. Matthias is also a part-time lecturer at Carnegie Mellon University and he maintains an adjunct professor position with the University of Pittsburgh.

Matthias has co-authored a book on web surveys and published on web surveys and selectivity. Motivated by his year with the SOEP department, his more recent work relates to survey panels. He is the author of a popular STATA software package for respondent driven sampling.