Mrs Mary-Ann Patterson, Roy Morgan Research

Mary-Ann joined the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) field team at Nielsen in August 2005. Until early 2009, she managed the phone interviewing and PA team at Nielsen specialising in gaining co-operation with reluctant respondents and interviewer training. When Roy Morgan Research won the HILDA fieldwork contract in 2009 Mary-Ann determined to remain with the study and joined into the Roy Morgan HILDA Research Project Team.

At Roy Morgan she has been responsible for developing training programs, working with the fieldwork team in managing interviewers and was instrumental in the establishment of Team 1800 (a specialised team trained to support the interviewer team). She was and is a fundamental team member involved in the changeover of Fieldwork methodology (paper to CAPI) and has enjoyed the success of breaking new response rate records each wave as part of the Roy Morgan HILDA Research team.

Over the years Mary-Ann has worked on the project she has completed nearly 1000 interviews and continues to visit and interview some of her long standing households each wave along with her current duties.

Prior to joining the HILDA Team, Mary-Ann worked in management of CATI (computer assisted telephone interviewing) and face to face interviewing teams and has a long standing history of workforce training and management.

Mary-Ann’s career goal is to one day reach 100% PWR response rate on the HILDA project and won’t give up until this target is reached.

Mary-Ann was awarded the HILDA Survey Distinguished Service Award for 2011 in recognition of her unwavering commitment to the HILDA Survey fieldwork.

Mrs Mary-Ann Patterson