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NORC at the University Chicago
High-impact research deserves a high profile, and NORC makes sure our clients’ work reaches a wide audience.

Research is useless sitting on a shelf. NORC’s expert communications team makes sure our clients’ cutting-edge studies and surveys are widely known, accessible, understandable, and engaging. We help maximize the impact of our clients’ research on thought leaders, policy makers, and the communities at stake.

We are involved in every phase of a project, brainstorming with researchers and checking in with participants to determine how to push out results in the most visible way.

Our expertise runs the gamut of communications techniques, strategies, and platforms. It includes traditional press relations, visual storytelling, webinars, public affairs outreach, media training, custom design, branding, and the creation of website user experiences that are second to none. We get our clients’ research off the shelf and into the hands of those who need it.

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Get to Know Our Experts

Explore the community of NORC staff working in strategic communications. 

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Highlighted Projects

AAPI Data/AP-NORC Monthly Poll

The nation’s first ever regular poll of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders

Client:

AAPI Data

A Blueprint for Collecting National Firearms Data

Reliable data hold the key to better policymaking

Client:

Arnold Ventures LLC

Advancing Metrics for Sexual Harassment Prevention in STEM

Developing metrics to assess sexual harassment prevention, outreach, and response in STEM

Client:

National Science Foundation
Strategic Communications Projects

Our Areas of Expertise

Communications Strategy

NORC supports client research with detailed communications strategies that begin well before the first surveys go out. Strategies include identifying potential audiences, alerting helpful policymakers, providing media training and talking points to project spokespersons, pitching stories to receptive journalists, and arranging webinars that pull together experts to discuss the work.

Publication Support

NORC offers professional and technical support for print and online publications. For example, after we surveyed law school deans for the Association of American Law Schools, we helped produce a public report by providing copy-editing, layout, and formatting services. Then we used social media to drive traffic to the association’s website.

User Experience

NORC delivers online storytelling that’s informative and compelling. A strong example is a scrolling storyboard we produced about the best practices of Medicare providers. As readers scroll down, they learn about success stories not only in crisply written copy but through background images, sliding graphics, pull quotes, and pop-up statistics that fill with color.

Branding

Our branding experts make sure research stands out while conforming to our clients’ guidelines for accessibility and content. In designing materials that explain findings, we carefully reflect the visual style of our clients, even down to the appropriate color schemes for graphics.

Media Relations

NORC cultivates reporter interest and energetically pitches story ideas to earn significant coverage of client research in an array of general and special interest news publications. Our work on a five-year study of child labor in cocoa-growing regions led to coverage in The Guardian, The Washington Post, Forbes, Fortune, and the ConfectioneryNews.

Digital & Social Media

Besides outreach to traditional media, our experts leverage digital and social media platforms to put breakthrough research directly in front of intended audiences and the general public. Case in point: we launched a Twitter feed and YouTube channel for the 50th anniversary of the General Social Survey, NORC’s venerable survey of American attitudes and behaviors.