Emily Geisen is the manager of RTI’s cognitive/usability laboratory and specializes in designing and evaluating survey instruments to improve data quality and reduce respondent burden. In addition, Ms. Geisen teaches a graduate course on Questionnaire Design at the University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill. In her tenure at RTI, she had conducted hundreds of usability tests on a variety of projects from the Survey of Graduate Students and Postdoctorates to the 2020 Census questionnaires. She was the 2010 conference chair for the Southern Association for Public Opinion Research (SAPOR) and the 2009–2011 secretary of the Survey Research Methods Section of the American Statistical Association. She is the 2016-18 American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) Membership and Chapter Relations Communications sub-chair. Ms. Geisen developed a short course on Usability Testing for Survey Researchers that was taught at the 2011 annual SAPOR conference; the 2016 AAPOR annual conference; the 2016 International Conference on Questionnaire, Design, Development, Evaluation and Testing; and UNC’s Odum Institute. Ms. Geisen also teaches an Introduction to Focus Groups course at the Odum Institute. Ms. Geisen received her B.A. in Psychology and Statistics at Mount Holyoke College, and received her M.S. in Survey Methodology in 2004 from the University of Michigan’s Program in Survey Methodology where she was an Angus Campbell fellow. While attending the University of Michigan, she also worked at the Institute for Social Research.
