Case Studies

Over the past ten years, we have conducted scores of projects as a sole source contractor or supplied survey task outsource services as needed. Our office infrastructure can comfortably process response spikes of 100,000 surveys per week while still maintaining tight organization on even the smallest of projects running at the same time. Listed below are examples of completed projects by type:


Project Resume - Miscellaneous

Saint Benedicts Monastery

DISC worked closely with the Communications Director for the Sisters of the Order of St. Benedict in the development of a survey research project (Nurturing Religious Vocations for a New Millennium) that sought to identify the motivational factors involved and the overall environment that favored a young woman’s desire to become a nun. Crucial information was gathered and analyzed from Catholics in the diocese. This information included data from many sensitive areas of faith as well as demographics, family history, and key “life influencing people and events.”


City of Saint Cloud Police Department

DISC data specialists converted the extensive electronic background and incident files into a format that could be loaded by the new police computer system that allows for instant patrol car-laptop look-up of both individuals and events that are in the system. The data was highly sensitive, confidential and crucial to the new system’s effectiveness.


North Dakota Department of Health

DISC has worked closely with the Winkelman Consulting firm on several important survey research projects for the ND Dept. of Health in the areas of workplace health and safety. Our role has been to provide survey instrument design, mailing and data capture services that included internet response options.


St. Olaf College

DISC contracted data capture and survey form optical imaging archival work with Prof. Odd S. Lovoll, Ph.D. during the research phase for one of his most impressive publications: The Promise Fulfilled: A Portrait of Norwegian Americans Today.

  • Scanned 22,000 survey faces
  • Data is OCR captured via 12 indexed fields and custom hand key edits interface
    to the database
  • Results were tabulated and delivered to Prof. Lovoll for analysis
  • The response images were indexed (12 ea.) and published on CD-ROM for in-
    depth analysis and to allow the researcher to then interpret the non-indexed
    fields based on an initial query of the indexed fields.