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Ashley Bowers
Director, Center for Survey Research
afbowers@indiana.edu

Last modified: Thursday, March 8, 2012

IU professor John M. Kennedy honored with research organization achievement award

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 8, 2012

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- John M. Kennedy, emeritus senior researcher and former longtime director of the Indiana University Center for Survey Research, has received the first-ever Association of Academic Survey Research Organizations achievement award, which is now named in his honor. The award acknowledges Kennedy's decades of service toward supporting academic survey research.

John Kennedy

John M. Kennedy

Print-Quality Photo

Citing "the lasting impact that John leaves on the academic survey research community and AASRO," AASRO President Yasamin Miller announced that "the AASRO achievement award will henceforth be named the John M. Kennedy Achievement Award."

Kennedy directed the IU Center for Survey Research for 25 years, from 1987 to early 2012. The center provides survey services to university faculty, government agencies, media and nonprofit organizations. Under Kennedy's leadership, the center helped to launch the widely cited National Survey of Student Engagement, an Internet and postal survey of college and university undergraduates at more than 750 U.S. and Canadian schools. NSSE, which began in 1999, now covers a sample of more than 2 million students. The Center for Survey Research also carries out the Law School Survey of Student Engagement, in which more than 80 law schools participate.

The AASRO award also honors Kennedy's contributions to the broader community of academic survey centers. In 1995, Kennedy organized the first in a long series of annual informal meetings of academic survey directors, which led to the creation of the Association of Academic Survey Research Organizations. Today, AASRO is an association of more than 60 academic survey research organizations from both private and public universities throughout the United States and Canada. AASRO's mission is to support and promote excellence in survey research conducted in academic settings. Since the organization formed in 2008, Kennedy has served on the steering committee and in a presidency role on the first executive committee.

In 2008, Kennedy also served as the first editor of the online journal Survey Practice, which provides practical information on the production of surveys, the application and outcomes of survey methods research, and the changing conditions that affect survey quality and survey organizations. Under Kennedy's guidance, Survey Practice has become a go-to resource for survey practitioners.

"John's tireless service to the research survey profession is outstanding," says Thomas Guterbock, chair of the AASRO achievement award committee and past president of AASRO. "Few people can claim to have made such important contributions to our field in such a variety of ways. We are so pleased to honor John as the first recipient of the AASRO Achievement Award and give the award his name."