AP-NORC Center Experts

Witt-Swanson is a survey methodologist with 15 years of experience in the survey industry. She has led single and multi-mode research and evaluation projects for academics, state government agencies, and non-profit organizations. These projects stretch across multiple fields, including survey methodology, political science, sociology, educational psychology, agriculture, and education to name a few. She is well versed in collecting and analyzing quantitative and qualitative data. Witt-Swanson is adept at developing complex sample designs and multiple methods of data weighting. In addition to helping others with their research, Witt-Swanson has also sought to further knowledge in the survey methodology field through two publications and almost 50 conference presentations. She received her BA in Political Science at Creighton University and her MS in Survey Research and Methodology at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln. 

Emily is a senior research scientist in the Public Affairs & Media Research department at NORC. She has a broad range of experience in social identity, environmental and energy policy, the COVID-19 pandemic, parenting and education, trust in government, and elections. She has a particular interest in distilling complex research findings for dissemination to stakeholders, journalists, and the broader public. She also serves as a member of NORC’s Institutional Review Board.

Emily currently serves as the project manager and survey operations lead for the National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation (FHWAR), the definitive source of data on participation and expenditures associated with fishing, hunting, and other wildlife-related recreation in the United States. She is also the survey operations lead for AP VoteCast, a modern, more accurate approach to election polling developed by the Associated Press and NORC.

Emily has also managed dozens of projects for The AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, including the MTV/AP-NORC Youth Political Pulse, a series of polls of young people on their attitudes toward politics leading up to the 2018 midterm elections, and the Working Longer program, a series of studies on older Americans’ experiences preparing for retirement after the Great Recession. She holds a master’s in Political Science from Northwestern University.

Steven Neil Durlauf is the Steans Professor in Educational Policy at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. Prior to this appointment, he was William F. Vilas Research Professor and Kenneth J. Arrow Professor of Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA.

Durlauf received a BA in economics from Harvard in 1980 where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and a Ph.D. in economics from Yale in 1986. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, Fellow of the Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. In 2011, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is co-director of the Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group, an international research network linking scholars across disciplines in the study of inequality and the sources of human flourishing and destitution. Durlauf is the current Editor of the Journal of Economic Literature.