MiCEHS Research Staff
Introduction Advisory Board Projects Brown Bags Grant Program
MiCEHS Staff Bios
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Director, MiCEHS CATI Program |
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Dr. Couper is a Senior Associate Research Scientist at the Institute for Social Research and an Adjunct Associate Professor for the Department of Sociology. He is also a Research Associate Professor in the Joint Program in Survey Methodology at the University of Maryland. He received a Ph.D. in sociology from Rhodes University, an M.A. in applied social research from the University of Michigan, and an M.Soc.Sc. from the University of Cape Town. His current research interests include survey nonresponse, design and implementation of survey data collection, effects of technology on the survey process, and computer-assisted interviewing, including both interviewer-administered (CATI and CAPI) and self-administered (web, audio-CASI, etc.) methods. |
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Director, MiCEHS Non-response Program |
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Dr. Groves is the Director of the Joint Program in Survey Methodology, a consortium of the University of Maryland, the University of Michigan, and Westat. He is also a Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan, and a Senior Research Scientist at the Institute for Social Research. He was Associate Director of the U.S. Census Bureau from 1990-1992, on loan from the University of Michigan. He is the author of Survey Errors and Survey Costs (Wiley, 1989), and co-author of Surveys by Telephone (Academic Press, 1979); Nonresponse in Household Interview Surveys (Wiley, 1998): chief editor of Telephone Survey Methodology (Wiley, 1988), and co-editor of Measurement Errors in Surveys (Wiley, 1991), as well as many articles in survey and statistical methodology. |
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MiCEHS Director |
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Jim
Lepkowski is a Senior Research Scientist at the Institute for Social Research,
where he conducts survey methodology research and directs the Summer Institute
in Survey Research Techniques. He
is a member of the faculty of the Joint University of Maryland-University of
Michigan Program in Survey Methods, and is an Associate Professor in the
Department of Biostatistics at the University of Michigan.
Dr. Lepkowski received his PhD from the University of Michigan in 1980.
Since that time, he has worked at the Institute for Social Research
designing, conducting, analyzing, and evaluating a variety of survey samples,
including area probability and telephone samples of households. The substantive content of most of this work has been health
or conditions that occur infrequently in the population. Dr. Lepkowski also has
conducted investigations into a wide variety of survey methodology problems,
including the design of telephone samples for households in the U.S., the
behavior of analytic statistics when the data are obtained from complex sample
surveys, imputation methods to compensate for item missing data in surveys,
weighting to compensate for unit nonresponse, and the interaction between
interviewer and respondent in the survey interview. He has served on a variety of national and international
advisory committees on survey research methods, including service to the World
Health Organization, the National Center for Health Statistics, the Food and
Drug Administration, the Bureau of the Census, the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
and other federal statistical agencies. He
is an active member of the American Statistical Association, serving in various
offices in the Survey Research Methods Section and Association committees, is a
Fellow of the Association, and an elected member of the International
Statistical Institute. |
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Director, MiCEHS Estimation Program |
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| Dr. Little is Chair and a
Professor of the Biostatistics Department as well as a Professor in the
Department of Statistics. He received his PhD in Statistics from
London University in 1974.
A primary research interest is the analysis of data sets with missing values. Many statistical techniques are designed for complete, rectangular data sets, but in practice biostatistical data sets contain missing values, either by design or accident. As detailed in my book with Rubin, initial statistical approaches were relatively ad-hoc, such as discarding incomplete cases or substituting means, but modern methods are increasingly based on models for the data and missing-data mechanism, using likelihood-based inferential techniques. Another interest is the analysis of data collected by complex sampling designs involving stratification and clustering of units. Since working as a statistician for the World Fertility Survey, Dr. Little has been interested in the development of model-based methods for survey analysis that are robust to misspecification, reasonably efficient, and capable of implementation in applied settings. Statistics is philosophically fascinating and diverse in application. Dr. Little's inferential philosophy is model-based and Bayesian, although the effects of model misspecification need careful attention. His applied interests are broad, including mental health, demography, environmental statistics, biology, economics and the social sciences as well as biostatistics. |
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Director, MiCEHS Measurement Error Program |
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| Dr.
Mathiowetz is an assistant professor at the Joint Program in Survey
Methodology. In addition, she has appointments at the University
of Michigan at both the Institute for Social Research and the Department
of Sociology. Broadly speaking, her research focuses on the
measurement of errors in surveys. Coupled with an interest in
cognitive psychology, much of her research has examined retrospective
reports of factual information by respondents and ways to improve the
quality of these reports. The substantive context for much of this
research has been in the area of health and health care delivery,
looking at respondents' ability to report health conditions, use of
health care services, type of health insurance, and expenditures for
health care. However, she has also dabbled in the area of labor
economics, examining the quality of reports of income, employment,
employer-related benefits, and occupation. While she finds the
measurement of survey errors of interest, one of her research goals is
to improve the quality of survey data--hence, she does experimentation
with questionnaire design as well as looking at modes of data collection
(e.g., face-to-face, telephone) and methods of data collection (paper
and pencil vs. computer assisted) as a means for reducing measurement
errors.
As a former federal employee, she has an applied interest in how survey data are used by policy makers and the ramifications of measurement error on the decision making process. For example, survey data are often used to estimate the number of individuals who may benefit from a particular program and the cost of that program (for example, prescription medicines for the elderly). What happens when there is error in the survey data used for those estimates? How can we inform policy makers about measurement error and its impact? |
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Director, MiCEHS Combining Data Program |
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Dr. Raghunathan is a Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Michigan and a Senior Associate Research Scientist at the Institute for Social Research. He is also a Research Associate Professor in the Joint Program in Survey Methodology at the University of Maryland. He received a Ph.D. in statistics from Harvard University in 1987. His research interests are in the general area of statistical analysis with missing data, with special interests in the analysis of survey data, Bayesian methods, and statistical methods for epidemiology. |
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MiCEHS Associate Director |
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Dr. Tourangeau is a Senior Research Scientist at the Survey Research Center (SRC), University of Michigan, and a Research Professor in the Joint Program in Survey Methodology (JPSM), University of Maryland. He received his Ph.D. in psychology from Yale University in 1978, and has been a survey researcher for nearly 20 years. Prior to joining SRC and JPSM, he worked at the Gallup Organization and at the National Opinion Research Center. His research interests include the psychological process involved in survey responses, and he is the lead author (with Lance Rips and Kenneth Rasinski) of a new book on that topic, Psychological Origin of Survey Responses. He has also conducted a large number of experiments comparing different methods of data collection, different versions of questions, and different question orders. |
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Senior Research Associate |
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Dr. Van Hoewyk is a Senior Research Associate in the Survey Research Center at the Institute for Social Research. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the City University of New York and has over 20 years of experience in the use of computers in the analysis of survey data. Currently, he is involved in the imputation of missing data in large-scale data sets, including the Consumer Expenditure Survey, National Health Survey, and National Health and Nutrition Examination. He is a member of a statistical software team at ISR that has developed IVEware, an imputation and variance estimation application. His interests also include the role of incentives in survey participation, disclosure risk in public release data sets, and public attitudes toward data sharing. |
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Research Associate |
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| Ms. Willem is a Research Associate in the Survey Research Center at the Institute for Social Research. She has a Bachelors in psychology from Dickinson College. Before coming to SRC, Ms Willem worked as a senior research assistant for Response Analysis Corporation in Princeton, NJ and as a project coordinator for the Treatment Research Institute in Philadelphia, PA. | |
