From: Mike Counter, St. Norbert College, http://www.snc.edu, 920-403-3089, mike.counter@snc.edu
DE PERE, Wis.: Along with its new name, the St. Norbert College Strategic Research Institute is offering new types of research services to enhance economic development and quality of life throughout the region and beyond.
Established in 1983 as the Survey Center, the St. Norbert College Strategic Research Institute has greatly expanded its capabilities, making it one of the Midwest’s leading sources of data-driven insight.
“Our bread and butter has always been surveys, and that will probably continue to be a significant part of what we do,” said David Wegge, director and founder of the St. Norbert College Strategic Research Institute. “But we are expanding to provide other kinds of services to meet the needs of government, business and other organizations in this region and even nationally.”
The St. Norbert College Strategic Research Institute now offers a wide array of social science research services, scalable to projects of any size. Those services include: market research; economic impact analysis; statistical modeling; feasibility studies; location analysis, demographic analysis and projections; message testing; and more. “We have a substantial amount of intellectual capital at St. Norbert College and want to bring that resource to bear nationally,” said Wegge.
Along with expanding services, the Strategic Research Institute is developing alliances with other research organizations around the country. By combining resources with these other organizations, the St. Norbert College Strategic Research Institute can provide a still wider variety of services.
The institute also continues to stay on the leading edge of the technology changes that are dramatically altering the research landscape. The transition into the online medium is one such change. “We are transforming how we deliver and gather information to respond to greater demands on the marketplace,” said Wegge. “We’re definitely going to see an increase in online research as well as growth in qualitative research such as the use of focus groups. So we are enhancing the way in which we’re gathering our information so to respond to our clients’ most critical issues.”
For more information on the St. Norbert College Strategic Research Institute, go to http://www.snc.edu/sri. You can also contact them by phone at 920-403-3247 or dave.wegge@snc.edu.
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ABOUT DAVE WEGGE
Dr. David Wegge has served the St. Norbert College political science discipline as a faculty member since 1979. Wegge earned his bachelor of arts degree from the University of Minnesota-Duluth, his master of arts degree from Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas, and his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He teaches courses on government, state and local politics, research methods and leadership studies. Wegge founded the St. Norbert College Survey Center (now the St. Norbert College Strategic Research Institute) in 1983. Recent national rankings conducted by FiveThirtyEight— a highly respected non-partisan blog featured on The New York Times’ website—placed the center among the top 15 out of 56 survey centers associated with academic institutions nationwide, and number one out of four featured survey organizations in Wisconsin. Wegge’s work has been used and reported upon by The Wall Street Journal, London Financial Times, The Economist, The New York Times, MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour, Newsweek, USA Today, CBS News, ABC News and CNN.
