Kari L. Carris

Kari L. Carris provides methodological expertise and managerial leadership to over 70 professional staff while also assisting with the development and oversight of NORC’s Health Sciences research portfolio. In addition to her administrative responsibilities, she develops and directs complex data collection and analysis projects for various federal agencies, foundations, and academic institutions. Carris also has served as a member of NORC’s Institutional Review Board.
Carris has more than a decade of experience leading multidisciplinary teams in the design, development, and delivery of complex survey data and analytic products used by policy makers and researchers in the public health, criminal justice, and mental health arenas. Her expertise spans a range of data collection methodologies and modes, having directed large- and small-scale telephone, in-person, web, and self-administered survey projects. From 2008-2012, she led NORC’s innovative address-based sampling, multimode data collection effort for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health across the U.S. (REACH U.S.) Risk Factor Survey. Under her direction, NORC completed more than 25,000 interviews annually via telephone, mail, or in-person data collection protocols with adults from various racial and ethnic groups across the country to monitor progress and achievements of community-based interventions designed to eliminate health disparities.
Carris served as the Associate Project Director for the National Immunization Survey (NIS) from 2013-2014. Sponsored by CDC’s National Center for Infectious and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD) and the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), the NIS is an extensive landline/cell phone RDD survey that is designed to collect immunization data about young children and teenagers. She directed methodological research projects for the NIS to improve response rates, address informational needs related to childhood vaccination rates, and investigate the feasibility of emerging sampling and data collection approaches.