International Projects

Global development and financial assistance programs demand a broad range of research and analysis to ensure that they respond to the needs of the most vulnerable populations and that scarce resource are allocated in the most effective manner possible.  Towards this end, NORC’s International Projects (INPRO) department provides core expertise in rigorous impact evaluations, process and other implementation evaluations, analytic research, and surveys and other data collection methodologies. INPRO’s areas of subject matter expertise include agriculture, infrastructure, international finance, microfinance, housing finance/mortgage lending, think tank mentoring, business climate, land registration, and poverty alleviation.

NORC has had a history of work in the international arena since shortly after the organization was founded in 1941, when founder Harry Field convinced the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to include a survey division within its scope, and then inspired the establishment in 1946 of the World Association for Public Opinion Research (WAPOR), an organization now represented by experts and scholars from more than 60 countries on six continents. In the 1960s, NORC led a five-nation study of public attitudes toward various political systems, and a national study of Canadian youth on their attitudes toward biculturalism and bilingualism. Two decades later, NORC worked with researchers in Japan and the Soviet Union to create comparability between variables used in surveys abroad to those used in the U.S.

In 1984, NORC was one of four research organizations ― the only one in the U.S. ― to found the worldwide social indicator research program, International Social Survey Program (ISSP), in its continued promotion of data collection that facilitates cross-national comparisons of social behavior and trends. Since then, ISSP has grown into a collaborative group of more than 40 member nations conducting surveys useful for social science research worldwide, and is supported in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

Today, the INPRO team’s work spans more than 25 countries across all regions of the world. 

Special Expertise​

• Democracy and Governance
• Finance
• Consumer Finance
• Microfinance
• Health
• HIV/AIDS
• Rural Health
• Land Management and Administration
• Poverty Alleviation
• Roads and Infrastructure
• Think Tanks
• Statistics and Sampling
• Study Design and Survey Methodology
• Data Collection and Management
• Program and Policy Analysis and Research
• Evaluation
• Impact Evaluation
• Policy Analysis and Recommendation
• Program Monitoring
• Technical Assistance