Polling and Analysis

Baruch College Survey Research (BCSR) designs and conducts surveys for government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and other partners on a wide range of public affairs topics. BCSR applies the highest standards of survey research and survey education in service of the overall mission of the School of Public Affairs.

With a state-of-the-art telephone canvassing center, BCSR possesses extensive capabilities for performing telephone surveys as well as mail and web survey data collection. Taking full advantage of the high level of expertise of SPA faculty and graduate students along with its New York City location allows BCSR to consistently develop, design, and conduct innovative survey research projects that investigate important and topical policy-relevant issues at both local and national levels.

BCSR’s recent projects have included several New York City public opinion polls, a New York City-wide health and mental hygiene survey, exit polls on user satisfaction in New York City public parks, web-based surveys on trends in nonprofit organization and leadership, and telephone surveys on smoking in New York State and public knowledge of campaign finance laws in Connecticut. For more information on these and other completed projects see our projects section.

BCSR resources include the sampling expertise of Zicklin Professor Martin Frankel, the political, policy and media expertise of SPA Professor Douglas Muzzio and the questionnaire design expertise of BCSR Director Micheline Blum. In addition, BCSR can call upon the extraordinary policy expertise of the SPA faculty and the exceptional level of professionalism of the CATI interviewing staff.

The BCSR team adheres to the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) Code of Professional Ethics and Practice for Survey Research. All research staff and interviewers have completed a certification for Research with Experimental Subjects, which fulfills the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services regulatory requirement for human research subjects protection.

Research Capabilities:

Baruch Survey Research offers a full range of services, including:

Research and sampling design
Questionnaire writing
Computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) at our own state-of-the-art CATI lab
Cell phone and land line sampling methods
Web-based and e-mail surveys
Focus groups
Exit polling
Foreign language interviewing and questionnaire translation
Weighting and statistical analysis
Consultation on survey research methodologies
Report writing and publication