Tuesday, September 30, 2025
1:00-2:00pm ET

1430BD ISR-Thompson
426 Thompson St.

Or via zoom:
Meeting ID: 913 3699 9447
Passcode: 878303

ABSTRACT: As part of the wider SRC Future of Surveys initiative, the committee on response rates vs. data quality has collectively identified what it believes to be the essential elements of a modern, standardized SRC report on the quality of the data produced by a given survey (a “quality profile”). This presentation will review the essential components of this quality profile identified by the committee, giving background on each and discussing the feasibility of producing these components for individual SRC projects and programs. The committee aims to use this presentation to invite a broader set of feedback from SRC faculty, staff, and affiliates on these components, as part of a dedicated effort to move toward the standardized preparation and dissemination of these quality profiles for all SRC data collection projects.

Brady T. West is a Research Professor in the Survey Methodology Program and the Department of Biostatistics. His current research interests include selection bias in surveys, the implications of measurement error in auxiliary variables and survey paradata for survey estimation, responsive and/or adaptive survey design, interviewer effects, and multilevel regression models for clustered and longitudinal data. An author of more than 230 peer-reviewed journal articles in survey methodology, applied statistics, and public health, he is also the lead author of two books that are now in their third editions, one of which compares different statistical software packages in terms of their mixed-effects modeling procedures (Linear Mixed Models: A Practical Guide using Statistical Software, Third Edition, Chapman Hall/CRC Press, 2022), and a second titled Applied Survey Data Analysis, Third Edition (with Steven Heeringa and Pat Berglund) that provides a comprehensive overview of practical analysis strategies for data arising from complex sample surveys. He was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 2022.

James Wagner is a Research Professor in the Survey Methodology Program. He has worked on surveys for over 25 years and has extensive experience with sample design. In addition to sample design, Wagner’s research interests include adaptive survey design to address potential nonresponse biases and indicators of survey data quality. He recently served as interim director of SRC.