UWSC

Business Office: (608) 262-1688
Hiring & Staffing Office: (608) 262-2076
Field Office: (608) 263-0860
Fax: (608) 262-8432

The University of Wisconsin Survey Center

University of Wisconsin - Madison
1800 University Ave. Rm 102
Madison, WI 53726

UWSC Project Staff

The UW Survey Center retains an excellent, highly trained project staff including project directors, programmers, and business staff, ensuring that every project moves smoothly from inception to completion.

Amy Becker

Project Assistant

Amy Becker joined the Survey Center in May of 2007 as a Project Assistant. Currently, Amy is also working on her PhD in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Her research focuses on the intersection of public opinion, political participation, and the consumption of alternative media forms like infotainment programming. Before joining the Survey Center and the graduate program at the School of Journalism at the University of Wisconsin, Amy worked in New York City as a researcher and pollster for both Democratic political campaigns and corporate clients.

Presently, Amy is working on a variety of telephone, mail, and intercept studies here at the Survey Center including the 2008 Synar Tobacco Field Study and MIDUS: Midlife in the U.S. National Study of Health and Well-being survey.

Amy attended Brown University in Providence, RI, graduating with a bachelor's degree in political science. She has completed previous graduate work at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California and has earned a master's degree from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Phone: (608) 262-5757

Email: abecker@ssc.wisc.edu

Bob Cradock

Project Director

Bob started at the Survey Center in 1991 and worked as an interviewer, project director, and database administrator until 1999. Before rejoining the Survey Center in 2003, he was a researcher in the UW Medical School's Center for Health Policy & Program Evaluation. He has experience with mail, CATI, CAPI, and focus group studies.

He is directing a variety of projects including the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System Survey (for the Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services, and Centers for Disease Control), the Asthma Follow-up to the BRFSS, and the Department of Workforce Development's survey of Job Center participants. He has managed studies of employee assistance programs, organic food buying, entrepreneurship, foster care, mercury consumption, and student satisfaction.

Bob has bachelor's degrees in sociology and chemistry from Rice University, and a master's degree in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with concentrations in social psychology and sociology of science.

Phone: (608) 265-9885

Email: rcradock@ssc.wisc.edu

Ken Croes

Project Director

Ken Croes joined the UWSC in 2003 as a CATI interviewer and served as a CATI shift leader from 2004 to 2005. From 2005 to 2008, as the UWSC's Mail and Data Entry Department supervisor, he oversaw the field production of 82 data entry and mail-based survey research studies.

A project director since March 2008, Ken was the client liaison for the web-based University of Wisconsin-Madison's Administrative Process Redesign Public Input Project. He is currently conducting stakeholder interviews for the Wisconsin Partnership Program Evaluation Project.

Ken did his doctoral field research in Nepal, where he conducted qualitative interviews on local people's participation in the Annapurna Conservation Area Project. His international work includes a grant-application consultancy on the use of culture in natural resource management and a teaching fellowship with Cornell University's Nepal Study Abroad Program in Kathmandu, Nepal.

Ken was awarded a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from Princeton University in 2007. He holds a M.S. in science and technology studies from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a B.A. in science, technology, and society from Penn State University.

Phone: (608) 262-6928

Email: kcroes@ssc.wisc.edu

Brendan Day

Programmer

As a UWSC programmer, Brendan is familiar with the CASES and Visual Basic programing languages. He is responsible for CATI instrument design and development, data cleaning, and preparing CASES data files, codebooks, and other documentation. He oversees coding of all open-ended data and occupation coding and has developed software that is used by the UWSC for coding, monitoring interviewer productivity, tracking response rates, and generating survey status reports.

Brendan is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison English Department with an emphasis in creative writing. He has sixteen years of survey research experience including telephone interviewing, training and supervising interviewers, database management, and customer satisfaction research in the corporate sector.

Phone: (608) 265-2285

Email: bday@ssc.wisc.edu

Kerryann DiLoreto Oliver

Project Director

Kerryann has been a project director at UWSC since 1999. Before joining the Survey Center, she worked as a Research Assistant on a number of projects, including the National Longitudinal Study of Aging, at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. Kerryann has directed mail, web, CATI, and CAPI studies for the Survey Center and is also a trained focus group facilitator. In 2003, she completed the WMH-CIDI (World Mental Health Composite International Diagnostic Interview) training at the University of Michigan.

Currently, Kerryann directs the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS), which now includes collecting Biomarkers from both Graduates and their Siblings. She also directs all three phases (sample frame creation, coverage, and compliance) of the Synar Tobacco Study for the Department of Health and Family Services. Kerryann has directed three waves, from 2002 through 2006, of the Midwest Young Adult Study.

Kerryann holds a master of science degree in sociology from UW Madison and received her bachelor's degree in Sociology and Philosophy with a minor in Religion, Culture, and Society from Loyola University Chicago.

Phone: (608) 265-6598

Email: kdiloret@ssc.wisc.edu

Jen Dykema

Associate Scientist and Survey Unit Coordinator

Dr. Jennifer Dykema is an Associate Scientist and Survey Unit Coordinator for the University of Wisconsin Survey Center and the Center for Demography and Ecology. Dr. Dykema assists Center researchers and staff on issues related to the collection of original data including question development, instrument design, and other survey-based design components. She has taught research methods at the UW and the Summer Institute of the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan. Before receiving her doctorate in sociology from the University of Wisconsin (2004), she worked in the Interview Methodology Program the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan.

Dr. Dykema has extensive experience and expertise in the field of survey research including: wording questions and designing survey instruments; developing protocols for, conducting, and analyzing the data from cognitive interviews, in-depth interviews, and focus groups; developing and implementing systems to code interviewer-respondent interaction; designing and implementing experiments to improve survey items; and conducting statistical analyses of response errors using multiple data sets. She has worked directly on developing or providing expert evaluation of several national and state-based surveys including the Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement, National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), the Youth Behavior Survey (YBS), the Schools and Staffing Survey, the Parent Survey 3, and the California Survey of Birth Defects.

Click here for a listing of selected publications.

Email: dykema@ssc.wisc.edu

Kelly Elver

Project Director

Kelly Elver has been a full time project director for the UWSC since August of 2000. Before joining the UWSC, she worked as a Research Program Manager for the Family Stress, Coping and Health Project in the School of Human Ecology for 11 years.

Kelly has directed both mail and phone surveys for the Survey Center and is also a trained focus group facilitator. She has directed a wide array of surveys at the UWSC, including the Behavioral Risk Factor Survey for the CDC and the Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services, and the MIDUS: Midlife in the U.S. National Study of Health and Well-being survey. This longitudinal survey was conducted for the UW Institute on Aging and the National Institute on Aging. MIDUS II was the ten year follow up on a national sample of over 7,000 Americans between the ages of 35 and 85. The portion of the protocol conducted by the UWSC included a 45 minute telephone survey, a 114 page mail survey, and a 15 minute cognitive testing telephone survey. The fielding of MIDUS II concluded in spring of 2006, though preparation for sample refreshment, and experiments in preparation for MIDUS III are still underway.

Currently Kelly is managing the Outcomes of Women Undergoing Breast Surgery survey, which is a 4 year longitudinal phone survey of Breast Cancer survivors conducted for the Medical College of Wisconsin, as well as surveys for the School of Nursing, the School of Engineering, and the School of Education.

Kelly also supervises and manages work flow issues for the project directing staff at UWSC, and acts as a liaison between project staff and field staff. She holds a bachelor's degree from the Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Phone: (608) 262-7360

Email: kelver@ssc.wisc.edu

Lisa Klein

Project Director

Lisa joined the project director team in 2007. She began working at UWSC as an interviewer in 2000 while she was an undergraduate at UW-Madison. She was quickly promoted to Shift Leader and then became a Survey Research Supervisor. She was instrumental in supervising and managing phone room staff during a period of tremendous growth at UWSC. She later worked as a graduate assistant for the WLS and MIDUS studies while she attended graduate school at UW-Madison.

Lisa co-directs the Family Health Study and a wide range of focus group projects focusing on improving student experiences at the University of Wisconsin. She also is the project director for UWSC Occupation and Industry Coding projects and Interaction Coding projects.

Lisa holds bachelor's degrees in political science and history. She also has a master's degree in literacy studies from the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at UW-Madison. Her research investigates the effects of standardized testing and assessment on teachers and students.

Phone: (608) 265-5463

Email: lklein@ssc.wisc.edu

Chad Kniss

Project Director

Chad joined the UWSC in August 2006. He has six years experience in designing, implementing, and managing survey projects, including: designing sampling schemes, designing questionnaires, training interviewers, managing telephone interviewers, as well as data coding, cleaning, and analysis. Before joining the UWSC Chad worked in survey centers at Northern Illinois University and the University of Kansas.

Chad attended the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where he received a bachelors degree in political science with minors in urban studies and history. He received a masters degree political science from the University of Kansas (with concentrations in American politics, public policy and federalism).

Phone: (608) 262-4157

Email: ckniss@ssc.wisc.edu

Augie Salick

Programmer

Augie originally joined the UWSC as an interviewer in 2003. He is currently a member of the programming team, with which he writes electronic survey instruments, cleans and delivers data to clients, and helps maintain the UWSC's computer network.

He graduated in 2005 from the University of Wisconsin - Madison with a bachelor's degree in engineering mechanics and astronautics.

Phone: (608) 265-4064

Email: asalick@ssc.wisc.edu

Wes Taylor

Programmer

Wes is a member of the programming and analytical team, responsible for survey programming, computer and network maintenance, and data analysis.

Wes holds a master's degree from the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University, and a bachelor's degree in environmental studies from the College of William and Mary. Most of his survey experience focuses on environmental and natural resource research. Wes previously worked at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources for eight years as a program manager, database administrator and analyst, and more recently in the private sector for two years as a project manager and producer for commercial software.

Phone: (608) 263-3349

Email: wtaylor@ssc.wisc.edu

Theresa Thompson-Colón

Project Director

Dr. Theresa Thompson-Colón is a full-time project director at the UWSC, and is responsible for the implementation, management, and completion of a number of large data collection and research projects including the Puerto Rican Elderly Health Condition Project (a collaboration between the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Department of Public Health at the University of Puerto Rico); the Wisconsin Family and Health Survey; and the 1910 and 1920 Puerto Rico Census Project.

Dr. Thompson-Colón is well experienced in directing all phases of project implementation and overseeing every aspect regarding research design; development, testing and implementation of questionnaires (both in English and Spanish); data collection; data entry, cleaning and coding; data management; and the preparation of data sets with full project and data documentation. Dr. Thompson-Colón has also produced articles, reports, and presentations, taking part in the analysis and dissemination of these study findings.

Dr. Thompson-Colón received her doctoral degree from the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2005. In her dissertation work, she examined the multiple and complex associations between social networks, migration, and the health status and well-being of Mexican immigrant mothers and their children with data collected both in Mexico and the US. She holds a bachelor's degree in business administration, majoring in marketing, from the University of Puerto Rico, and a Master's degree in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Email: tthompso@ssc.wisc.edu

Kristen Velyvis

Project Director

Kristen joined the Survey Center in May of 2006. She has worked in survey research for more than 10 years and has participated in all aspects of the survey research process. She has designed survey questionnaires and sampling plans, managed data collection activities and designed data entry systems. Kristen also has experience using qualitative methods, including focus groups. Kristen worked internationally for much of her field research career and also has a great deal of experience with data analysis and research writing.

Kristen currently directs the Bereavement and Widows portions of the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) . The Bereavement Study has one of the most innovative samples ever attempted at the Survey Center, including widows, siblings, children, other relatives and non-relatives. She also co-directs a new effort to collect project data in Mozambique. Kristen is also directing the Land Trust Alliance phone survey and Southwest Wisconsin Area Health Education Center mail and web surveys.

Currently Kristen is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research interests are in health, research methodology, and demography. Her dissertation research examines the social networks and sexual behavior of two groups of migrant women in Senegal, West Africa with the goal of assessing their risk for HIV infection. Kristen holds a bachelor's degree from Harvard University and a master's degree in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Phone: (608) 263-3427

Email: kvelyvis@ssc.wisc.edu

Drew Vogel

Programmer

Drew began his career with the Survey Center as a telephone interviewer and Shift Leader while earning his B.S. in computer information systems from Herzing College. Now he helps maintain the computer network and programs Web applications that support various business and operational functions of the Survey Center. He is also UWSC's resident linux expert.

Phone: (608) 261-1922

Email: dvogel@ssc.wisc.edu

Eric White

Director of Technical Operations

Eric is the Director of Technical Operations at the Survey Center. He supervises a team of five technical staff and is the UWSC network administrator. He holds a B.A. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin - Madison and completed the sociology department's Concentration in Analysis and Research program.

He is an experienced CASES programmer, having worked with the CASES software suite since 1992. Eric is also the network administrator for the Survey Center's Netware and Linux servers. He and the other technical staff support and maintain more than 100 workstations.

Phone: (608) 265-4066

Email: ewhite@ssc.wisc.edu