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NORC at the University Chicago

Nicholas Davis

Pronouns: He/Him

Principal Statistician
Statistics & Data Science
Nick is an experienced statistician with expertise in survey research and public health data analysis.

Nicholas (Nick) is a principal statistician in the Statistics & Data Science department. Nick has over 15 years of experience in statistical analysis and survey methodology, with a focus on the large scale national public health and health care surveys, survey sampling and weighting methods, administrative and claims data, Medicare and Medicaid populations, quality assurance, disclosure review and confidentiality, statistical programming, machine learning, modeling and predictive analytics.

Nick has contributed to the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS), the General Social Survey (GSS), National Immunization Surveys (NIS), and the National Flu Surveys (NFS). He has been a key contributor to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) dissemination of Medicare utilization and cost data, as well as the FluVaxView influenza vaccination surveillance program of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). He has served as a sampling and weighting statistician on the MCBS, developing innovative sampling solutions, improving aspects of weighting and estimation, and exploring and incorporating administrative data to supplement survey operations. He has assisted the GSS with developing enhanced weights to improve estimation. On the NIS and related surveys of influenza vaccination, he has been a key contributor in the areas of imputation, data processing, and quality assurance, and has lead initiatives to protect confidentiality and reduce disclosure risk. Nick has also lead original work at NORC related to new uses of social media and other organic data for social science research.

Prior to joining NORC, Nick was a senior statistical consultant in the marketing analytics industry, providing expertise in predictive modeling and analytics, media mix optimization, and customer segmentation and latent class analysis, and conducted original actuarial research related to machine learning, predictive modeling, and geospatial and temporal statistics for a major national insurer. Davis is a member of the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) and the American Statistical Association (ASA).

Project Contributions

National Immunization Surveys (NIS)

One of the nation’s largest phone surveys and the gold standard for data on U.S. immunization rates

Client:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases

Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS)

The most comprehensive source of data on Medicare spending and the evolving needs of beneficiaries

Client:

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services

The General Social Survey

The most rigorous, widely used data on the attitudes, opinions, and behaviors of the American public

Client:

The National Science Foundation

Publications

Research Library & Findings