Fritz Scheuren

Fritz Scheuren Senior Fellow and Vice President

Center for Excellence in Survey Research

Ph.D., Mathematical Statistics, The George Washington University
M.A., Statistics, The George Washington University
B.A., English Literature, Tufts University

​Fritz Scheuren is a Senior Fellow and Vice President at NORC in the Center for Excellence in Survey Research. Scheuren has an unparalleled record of work on complex substantive tasks related to sampling and to the analysis of data from government agencies and private sector institutions. Notable work at NORC includes a landmark project resolving issues with Indian Trust Fund accounts at the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) as well as work with the Federal Reserve, particularly the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) and at the Census Bureau. Scheuren is currently leading impact evaluations of MCC-funded programs in Georgia and Lesotho, and formerly advised MCC on impact evaluations in Armenia and Vanuatu. He brings a proven ability to solve hard, non-standard problems and the theoretical background to back these solutions up with sound statistical arguments.   

Prior to joining NORC, Scheuren held several positions as the senior statistical officer for a range of public and private sector organizations, including with the Statistical Sampling Economics Group, Ernst & Young, LLP, where he was a Principal, the Statistics of Income Division of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service where he was its long-serving Director; and as Chief Mathematical Statistician at the Social Security Administration. Scheuren also serves on the Statistics Faculty at The George Washington University (GWU), where he had been a Visiting Professor of Statistics. At GWU, he created a successful survey sampling certificate program at which he still teaches. Most of his over 450 applied and theoretical papers, presentations, monographs, and books are on sampling aspects of data collection primarily in a survey context, with an emphasis on sample design and estimation, process quality, and the handling of missing data. He has written over a half dozen books. 

Scheuren served as the 100th President of the American Statistical Association (ASA)  and chaired the ASA Sections on Survey Research Methods and, later, the Social Statistics Section. He has been their Scientific Secretary at the International Association of Survey Statisticians. He is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and the America Society for the Advancement of Science.

Representative Projects

Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF).

Sponsored by the Federal Reserve Board, this triennial survey is the only fully representative source of information on the broad financial circumstances of U.S. households. No other survey collects data on the household finances of a probability sample of Americans.  Data from the SCF are used to inform monetary policy, tax policy, consumer protection, and a variety of other policy issues. The data also serve as a basis for longer-term research on the economic state of the American family. More

Survey of Economically Successful Americans. Economically successful Americans have views about national problems that can be of great value to scholars and policy makers.  But little is known about the views of the most successful Americans which leads to these views being ignored and sometimes distorted by the media.  The Survey of Economically Successful Americans and the Common Good (SESA) gives this select group a rare opportunity to make their voice heard by academics and policy makers engaged in matters of national importance. More

MCC Impact Evaluation Services in the Republic of Georgia. The Goal of MCC’s Compact with the Government of Georgia is to reduce rural poverty through better economic performance by improving the two main barriers to economic growth: a lack of reliable infrastructure and the slow development of businesses, particularly agribusiness.  More

Statistical Efforts in Support of the Office of Historical Trust Accounting.

NORC played a major role in the settlement of the Cobell lawsuit that alleged mismanagement of Individual Indian Money trust accounts and now provides statistical expertise to the Office of Historical Trust Accounting as they examine Tribal Trust accounts. More

Privacy-Protected Method for Collecting Data on Immigration Status Through In-Person Surveys. Funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation, and led by Fritz J. Scheuren, this project studies and tests a method—developed by the U.S. Government Accountability Office in 2006—that asks sensitive questions about immigration status  and  protects respondent anonymity, reduces question threat,  provides direct estimates of the foreign–born in all legal immigration statuses, and indirect estimates of undocumented residents. More

See all Fritz Scheuren projects

Contact

Fritz Scheuren

(301) 634-9440