CREDENTIALS

Tina Kassebaum, M.A.
Research Scientist

Tom Kassebaum, M.S.
Systems Administrator

Scott Renshaw, B.A.
VP of Data Collection

Dan Wisneski, B.A.
Research Associate

Supervisors

Kathleen Carr, Ph.D.
President/CEO

Dr. Kathleen Carr. Since earning her doctorate in Sociology at Indiana University in 1987, Dr. Carr has accumulated nearly 25 years of experience conducting public opinion research on a local, state, and national level. Her research skills have been honed in academic settings at both the University of California and The Ohio State University where she directed research centers before founding the Strategic Research Group. Thus, it is not surprising that at the foundation of SRG is its scientifically based procedures and methods. Dr. Carr is an expert on methodology including research design, sampling, issues of non-response, and survey questionnaire design. She continues to teach research methodology courses for the OSU Department of Sociology.
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Melissa Beers, Ph.D.
VP Research Services

Dr. Beers is trained in social psychology, with an emphasis on research design and analysis. Over the past 12 years, Dr. Beers has gained extensive experience in designing, implementing, and analyzing academic and applied social cognitive research. With research experience in a wide range of social issues, including health care, education, transportation, safety, and public policy, she is adept at determining appropriate research techniques and statistical analyses required to answer critical research questions, and in formulating actionable, research-based recommendations.
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Lisa Carter
Office Manager

Ms. Carter is responsible for a wide range of administrative and financial tasks as well as the smooth operation of the day-to-day business of the company. With superior planning, organizational, and accounting skills, Ms. Carter manages payroll, accounts receivable, human resources and inventory, and has the crucial responsibility of project financial tracking. She coordinates SRG office operations, enabling our survey, research, and communication units to organize and execute project work efficiently and effectively.

In addition, Ms. Carter contributes her problem-solving abilities, communication skills, and sound judgment to multiple aspects of the research process, assisting with project logistics and scheduling, telephone surveying and data collection, qualitative data coding, data entry and cleaning, and editing, among other tasks as needed.

Ms. Carter is concurrently pursuing a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics at the Ohio State University.
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Kristen Heimdal, Ph.D.
Research Scientist

Ms. Heimdal is a highly experienced researcher and data analyst trained in sociology with an emphasis in research methodology and quantitative statistical analysis. She has experience with many data analyses software packages, including SPSS, Stata, AMOS, and LISREL. Having worked with numerous sizeable longitudinal and cross-national data sets, she is adept at data management and manipulation. Additionally, she has experience with a range of statistical techniques, including OLS regression, logistic regression, event history analysis, and structural equation modeling. In her academic research, Ms. Heimdal’s interests and expertise lie in family sociology, health and well-being, and population studies. Ms. Heimdal is an effective public speaker and writer; she has presented at several professional meetings and her research has been published in peer-reviewed academic journals. In addition, she is an award-winning instructor with extensive experience teaching research methods to sociology majors at the Ohio State University, as well as several other sociology courses. Ms. Heimdal is concurrently completing her Ph.D. at The Ohio State University in Sociology.  

Jodi Hertvik, B.S.
Chief Financial Officer

Ms. Hertvik has over ten years of experience supervising data coding and entry with eight years at the Polimetrics Laboratory for Political and Social Research at The Ohio State University. At SRG, she directs the data coding of the open-ended data from our telephone surveys.
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Tina Kassebaum, M.A.
Research Scientist

Ms. Kassebaum offers 15 years of experience in computing, statistical analysis, and the social sciences. Ms. Kassebaum conducts cross-national comparative analysis focusing on inequality, ethnicity and ethnic conflict, and political democracy. Much of her work focuses of modeling and proper methodological techniques. She utilizes multi-national datasets such as World Bank's World Development Indicators, World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators, CIA's World Factbook, Ted Gurr's Minorities at Risk and Polity IV datasets, and Summers and Heston's Penn World Tables. Ms. Kassebaum is a skilled communicator and teaches research methods and statistical analysis to sociology majors at the Ohio State University. Additionally, Ms. Kassebaum has extensive experience with data analysis and multi-stage weighting techniques including both sampling weights (to insure equal probability of selection) and post-stratification weights (to generate population estimates). Since joining SRG, Ms. Kassebaum has been the statistician for projects on both a state and national level. Ms. Kassebaum is currently completing her Ph.D. in Sociology at The Ohio State University.

Tom Kassebaum, M.S.
Systems Administrator

Scott Renshaw, B.A.
VP of Data Collection

Mr. Renshaw heads the staff in the SRG telephone research unit. He has over 6 years of experience managing survey research divisions, particularly in the areas of interviewer supervision and quality assurance. Working closely with Dr. Carr since 1996, Mr. Renshaw has supervised telephone surveys on a wide range of target populations and a wide range of survey topics. Previous to joining SRG, he held a similar position with the Survey Research Unit at The Ohio State University, where he honed his skills in all aspects of survey operations management. At SRG, Mr. Renshaw is in charge of the telephone research unit, and his duties include the training, supervision, and evaluation of research aides, as well as the implementation of a variety of techniques necessary for quality assurance of the survey data. Mr. Renshaw is assisted by several outstanding survey supervisors, and together they have consistently produced high quality survey data for SRG projects that require telephone interviewing.
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Dan Wisneski, B.A.
Research Associate

Mr. Wisneski began working at SRG in April of 2005, and since that time has gained significant professional experience in developing, maintaining, and analyzing data sets for a broad range of projects. While he provides extensive support for the project directors in all area of the research process, his primary duties include data management, including formatting and recoding data, data cleaning and analysis, and preparation of results summaries and reports. His thoroughness and attention to detail make him a highly valued member of the team. In addition to his professional experience in quantitative research, Mr. Wisneski has a background of academic study which includes statistics and research methods. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from the Ohio State University in early 2005. His research training includes experimental research methods and statistical analysis, and his senior thesis focused on the role of chronically accessible Causal Uncertainty beliefs and their effect on stereotype usage.

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Supervisors

Jonathon Hulbert    Meredith Carr     Eric Jennings

Research Aides

SRG employs 30 - 50 Research Aides at any one time, depending on project demands. Research Aides are trained to conduct telephone interviews in our in-house CATI facility, or to conduct scanning and verification of mail survey data. Research Aides are closely supervised at all times. They are drawn from The Ohio State University and the surrounding Columbus metropolitan area. Several of our long-term Research Aides have been promoted to Senior Research Aides and assist in supervision and administrative tasks.