We are often asked about our name and what it stands for. CHRR was founded in 1965 as the Center for Human Resource Research. We changed our to-do-business name to CHRR at The Ohio State University. As the meaning of human resources has evolved over time, we remain committed to our mission of studying an array of socioeconomic factors through survey research and the organization and dissemination of administrative data. Today, we use CHRR at The Ohio State University to emphasize our connection with one of the nation’s leading research universities as we provide survey and data services for researchers worldwide.
CHRR Directors
1965 — Herbert Parnes and Samuel Clifton 'Clif' Kelley, co-directors
1977 — Michael Borus
1985 — Ken Wolpin
1987 — Randall Olsen
2015 — Elizabeth Cooksey
2021 — Stephen Gavazzi (Interim)
2022 — Stephen Gavazzi
Pioneers in Survey Research and Technology
1965 — Herb Parnes founds CHRR to manage the National Longitudinal Surveys of Labor Market Experience for the U.S. Department of Labor, a project that continues to this day.
1966-68 — The NLS Original Cohorts began with groups of Older Men, Mature Women, Young Men and Young Women.
1979 — National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) 12,686 men and women ages 14-21, interviewed beginning in 1979 and continues biennially.
1986 — CHRR introduces the NLSY79 Child survey, an innovative and important extension of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, in which the children of NLSY79 mothers are interviewed and assessed for the first time. A Young Adult interview was added in 1994 as the children reached early adulthood.
1989 — First release of general purpose survey data on CD with extraction software.
1993 — First CAPI interview of a full cohort.
1997 — National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97) cohort: 8,984 men and women ages 12-16 as of December 31, 1996. This cohort continues to be interviewed biennially.
1997 — CHRR partners with the State of Ohio to conduct a survey of former welfare recipients aimed at determining the impact of welfare reform on Ohio residents until 1999.
2004 — Creating a virtual call center, CHRR connects interviewers with respondents via the internet across the entire country. Interviewers contact respondents using VoIP, Dialvision®, and our Web survey software.
2010 — CHRR manages the Ohio Longitudinal Data Archive (OLDA) repository for several State of Ohio agencies.
2012 — OERC partnership.
2015 — NLS and CHRR celebrate 50 years. Read more in the OSU News article: Nearly anything you want to know about Americans is in this survey.
2017 — CHRR launches the American Population Panel (APP), adding social media as a respondent recruitment tool along with traditional modes, surveying 4,000 respondents nationwide for the NSASS.
2019 — The NLS has more than 10,000 citations, including 4,436 journal articles and 1,335 PhD dissertations.
2020 — CHRR partners with Ohio State’s Global One Health initiative (GOHi) to administer the Rapid Coronavirus Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPI) Survey in Ethiopia.
2023 — CHRR partners with the State of Ohio for the survey and data management components of the State of Ohio Action for Resiliency (SOAR) Network research initiative. The framework for SOAR is built in part on CHRR’s successful work on the 2022 Ohio Gambling Survey.
For more information about the various research projects CHRR has been involved in, please visit our projects page.