The study of organizations is fundamental to studying social behavior.
NORC's experience with organizations covers a variety of enterprise types and a variety of data collection modes. For example, the U.S. National Organization Study 2 (NOS2), an omnibus survey sponsored by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), collected detailed information from workplaces about setting, size, industry, and sector. Data were also collected about health benefits and views of health policy, mental health coverage and perceptions, performance-contingent compensation, employee ownership, violence prevention, and safety. The sample of business organizations was generated by asking for names of employers from respondents to the 2002 General Social Survey (GSS). This allowed researchers to link employer data with the employee data obtained from the GSS interview. Data were collected during a 45-minute interview conducted by telephone.
In addition, the Survey of Small Business Finances (SSBF), sponsored by the Federal Reserve Board, was conducted twice by NORC. This was a telephone survey of a nationally-representative sample of 4000 small businesses (fewer than 500 employees) to collect information about their financial relationships, credit experiences, lending terms and conditions, income and balance sheet information, and the location and types of financial institutions they use, as well as firm characteristics. NORC revised and programmed the CATI questionnaire, designed and selected the sample, pre-tested, and then screened businesses for sample selection. Business owners were interviewed via telephone. Upon completion of data collection, NORC computed weights and delivered the data along with a methodology report.
NORC staff have also been involved in a variety of projects using matched employer employee data to examine businesses and their workers. One example is the Conference on the Analysis on Firms and Employees (CAFÉ2006) which will result in both an NBER/University of Chicago Press book and a special issue of Labour Economics.