René is associate director of the Methodology & Quantitative Social Sciences department at NORC at the University of Chicago, where he is co-principal investigator and director of the General Social Survey (GSS). During his tenure at NORC, he has contributed to the design and execution of major government- and privately funded projects, covering qualitative and quantitative aspects. René’s professional experience at NORC has provided him with an excellent understanding of critical topics in the survey industry. Whether it is the continually evolving methods of data collection, a growing distrust of surveys, or issues in communicating and interpreting findings, his work has supported clients, the public, the media, and academics alike.

René has provided statistical guidance to a variety of projects, including the National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE), a project conducted on behalf of the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE). His work in the NSECE has ranged from improving programming methodologies for data production to conducting latent class analyses to understand supply and demand of education services. René has extensive experience transitioning survey instruments into alternative modes of data collection, preserving measurement properties, comparability over time, and data quality. For example, René led the redesign of the National Survey of Children’s Health (2015) which evolved from a CATI instrument to a self-administered instrument (paper- and web-based) with a focus on maintaining measurement properties, given declining response rates in the telephone mode. During the global COVID-19 pandemic, René led the transitioning process to adapt the General Social Survey (GSS) from face-to-face to a multi-mode strategy, putting special care in preserving measurement properties, comparability over time, and data quality.

René has served as lead methodologist for activities impacting the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS), studying how limited English proficiency (LEP) may impede access to healthcare. Also, René served as director for the Worker Voice Study, a survey commissioned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan School of Management, aiming to collect information among 4,000 workers across the country. Previously, he worked at the Gallup Research Center at the University of Nebraska. René has also consulted as Election Night Analyst with Edison Media Research–exclusive provider of exit polling data to ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Fox News, NBC News and the Associated Press.