About the Survey Research Laboratory
SRL is a research and service unit established in 1964. It is a division of the University of Illinois at Chicago's College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs that provides survey research services to the faculty, staff, and students of the University of Illinois at Chicago and Urbana-Champaign; other academic institutions; local, state, and federal agencies; and others working in the public interest.
SRL has offices on the Chicago and Urbana-Champaign campuses of the University and can undertake complete survey projects from initial study design through data analysis. It also can conduct partial survey work such as sampling, questionnaire design, focus groups, data collection, instrument programming, and data reduction and can provide consultation on survey problems on a fee-for-service basis.
Almost since its inception, SRL has had major ongoing programs in survey methodology. In recent years, SRL's methodological research has focused on cognition; response effects; respondent selection; questionnaire design and interviewing techniques for collecting hard-to-obtain data; validity of self-reported data; and improved techniques for face-to-face, mail, and telephone surveys, particularly for surveys on sensitive topics and with special populations. More recently, SRL has developed methodological interests in cross-cultural sources of survey measurement error and the unique challenges of conducting social surveys in urbanized environments. The majority of this research has been carried out in the area of health, reflecting the interests and expertise of the senior research staff.