As a senior researcher, Jen Benoit-Bryan designs, conducts, and interprets audience research studies, applying both quantitative and qualitative research methods to respond to client needs. Jen uses a variety of research tools to address client questions such as focus groups, workshops, interviews, ethnography, surveys, segmentation, and data mining. Jen has also helped a number of clients build their internal research capacity through targeted training sessions. Jen applies these research tools to many clients across the arts and culture sector, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Detroit Institute of Art, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, the Museum of Science, Boston, Carnegie Hall, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, among many other arts and culture clients.
She has presented papers at national and international conferences such as the American Association for Public Opinion Research and published in leading journals such as Public Administration Review. She is an active member of the American Association of Museums and the Visitor Studies Association.
Before joining Slover Linett, Jen was a researcher at the University of Illinois, where she conducted research for non-profit and government clients including the MacArthur Foundation, the Chicago Community Trust, and the Online Computer Library Center. She also ran a small consulting firm that specialized in providing research services to non-profit youth service organizations such as the National Runaway Safeline.
Jen earned a PhD in public administration with a focus on survey research from the University of Illinois in 2014. Jen’s doctoral dissertation analyzed the long term harms on adolescents of running away from home and the protective factors at the peer, school, and neighborhood levels that can reduce those harms. Jen also has a Master’s degree in public administration from the University of Missouri, and Bachelor’s degrees in international business, marketing, and French from the University of Missouri.