Skip to main content
NORC at the University Chicago

Kate Bachtell

Pronouns: She/Her

Senior Research Director
Economics, Justice & Society
Kate is a senior director of large-scale, multi-mode data collection projects and an analyst trained in both quantitative and qualitative research methods.

Kate oversees research for federal organizations and agencies like the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (FRB), Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (AFWA), and National Science Foundation (NSF), along with academic partners. She has twenty years of experience managing a wide range of data collection activities, including questionnaire design, cognitive testing, interviewer training, participant recruitment, in-depth interviewing, data review, and data harmonization. Her recent methodological research focuses on monetary incentives and adaptive survey design. Kate also has 16 years of experience conducting community-based, longitudinal research focused on child and family well-being. 

Kate is currently assistant project director for the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), sponsored by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. The SCF data inform a wide variety of economic policy decisions across the government and research on the economic state of the American family. She formerly served project director of the 2022 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation. For this study, NORC expects to conduct more than 200,000 interviews across four waves for the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies and sixteen state wildlife agencies. Kate also served as associate project director for the Making Connections Survey, a ten-year study of low-income communities funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Following survey data collection, Kate provided technical assistance and mentoring to external users of longitudinal datasets and coordinated research awards with three cohorts of longitudinal data users.

Project Contributions

Survey of Fishing, Hunting & Wildlife-Associated Recreation

Streamlining, economizing, and increasing the reach of a venerable national survey

Client:

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, The Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies

Survey of Consumer Finances

The only fully representative source of data on the financial condition of U.S. households

Client:

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

Making Connections Surveys

A longitudinal and cross-sectional study conducted in low-income neighborhoods in ten U.S. cities

Client:

The Annie E Casey Foundation

Making Connections Research Scholars

Providing analytical opportunities for early-career scholars and researchers of color

Funder:

The Annie E. Casey Foundation

Publications

Research Library & Findings