Catherine C. Haggerty

Catherine C. Haggerty is Vice President of the Economics, Justice and Society department at NORC. She collaborates in establishing the department’s research agenda, business development, partnerships, and strategic outreach and planning, while managing small- and large-scale projects. She fulfills leadership responsibilities on various corporate committees focused on business development and is a member of NORC’s Institutional Review Board.
Haggerty has worked in the social science industry for more than 30 years managing all aspects of survey research for data collection projects including sample selection, listing, screening, questionnaire development, focus groups, pilot testing, systems development and testing, remote and in-person training, data collection, records abstraction, reporting, data preparation, delivery, and documentation. During the last decade she has managed the Survey of Consumer Finances, Making Connections and the Resident Relocation Study. She is also currently managing the Survey of Economically Successful Americans and is the Co-Principal Investigator of the Houston Foreclosure Study.
She has led teams that have developed training and mentoring programs that have resulted in improved data quality, designed strategies that maintain or increase response rates, and implemented quality improvement programs that have increased the efficiency of NORC’s data collection processes. In addition to her expertise in national large-scale, multimode longitudinal field data collection efforts, which include computer-assisted personal interviewing, paper-and-pencil interviewing and self-administration, she has also managed both large- and small-scale computer-assisted (CATI) studies. Prior to joining NORC in 1987, Haggerty worked as director of telephone operations at the Rand Corporation and director of the telephone center at UCLA’s Institute for Social Science Research. At both organizations she worked to improve screening and response rates. During her two years at the Rand Corporation she worked primarily on the Medical Outcomes Study and at UCLA she was a supervisor for the California Disability Study, the first academic CATI survey undertaken in the U.S., as well as numerous other CATI studies during her eight- year tenure.
Haggerty was a special issue guest editor of Housing Policy Debate, published in 2010. She has also co-authored scholarly papers addressing survey methodology and poverty-related issues; these papers have been presented at the American Association for Public Opinion Research, the Urban Affairs Association, National Association for Welfare Research and Statistics, and the Society for Lifelong and Longitudinal Studies.