CREDENTIALS

Tom Kassebaum, M.S.
Systems Administrator

Scott Renshaw, B.A.
VP of Data Collection

Kimberly White, M.A.
Research Scientist

Britney Williams, M.C.P.R.
Research Scientist

Kathleen Carr, Ph.D.
President/CEO

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.
Consultant

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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Ms. Aran Carr, B.A.
Office Manager

Ms. Carr 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 and organizational skills, Ms. Carr 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. Ms. Carr also provides support in multiple aspects of the research process, including assisting with project logistics and scheduling, telephone surveying, focus group moderation, site visits, data entry, coding, and other tasks as needed. Ms. Carr received her B.A. from Otterbein College.
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Kristen Heimdal, Ph.D.
VP of Research Services

Dr. Heimdal is an innovative, self-directed professional with a broad range of experience in both academic and applied research. Dr. Heimdal brings to every project a commitment to accuracy as well as client satisfaction, and under her management some of SRG’s largest-scale projects have been completed on time, to our clients’ specifications, and with the greatest attention to detail possible. Dr. Heimdal has a proven track record of managing multiple projects as well as multiple tasks within individual projects effectively. An engaging public speaker and writer, Dr. Heimdal routinely presents research results to clients and their constituents. She has also 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.

Tina Kassebaum, M.A.
Senior 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 12 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 both qualitative and quantitative projects on a wide range of target populations and topics. In fact, he has managed all mail and telephone data collection efforts for SRG since it was founded. 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. Mr. Renshaw has a degree in Organizational Communication from The Ohio State University.
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Kimberly L. White, M.A.
Research Associate

Ms. White received her Master’s degree in Political Science from The Ohio State University in 2006, and gained significant experience in project coordination and data analysis at Ohio State's Student Affairs Assessment Office. Since joining SRG, Ms. White has played a critical role in managing both quantitative and qualitative data, ensuring data quality in SRG's survey research unit. An experienced analyst, her data management skills include data cleaning, merging, weighting, and restructuring and recoding for comparability, and she is well versed in a variety of data analysis software packages.

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Britney Williams, M.C.P.R.
Research Associate

Ms. Williams is a recent graduate from The Ohio State University with a Master’s degree in City and Regional Planning. She joins SRG’s research team with over two years of experience with the State of Ohio, Department of Development where she gained project management and needs assessment competencies while developing her data management, mathematical modeling and analysis interests. Additionally, Ms. Williams brings fresh skills and ideas from her recent education in Urban Planning and broad social science background. She has compiled and managed large datasets of economic and social indicators, and has applied these data in efforts to monitor program effectiveness and fidelity.

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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.