I maintain research interests in survey methodology and gender. My survey methodology interests are driven by an unwavering belief in the importance of high quality data as a basis for science, decision-making, and policy. Thus, my research focuses on how contemporary data collection practices affect data quality and how we can improve those methods to increase data quality. My work covers various aspects of data collection, including questionnaire design in interviewer-, self-administered, and mixed mode surveys; questionnaire design for mobile web surveys; visual design in mail and web surveys; within-household selection in self-administered surveys; survey recruitment; and interviewer/respondent interactions in telephone surveys. I use many methods in my research, including experimentation, eye tracking, cognitive interviews, and behavior coding.
I also maintain an interest in the sociology of gender. My early work on gender was concerned with how gender is produced and its consequences in the family farm setting where many of the most common strategies that have been identified in the literature for “doing gender” are less available or practical. My more recent work brings together my interest in survey methodology and the sociology of gender by developing and testing a measure of gender that can be asked in addition to the traditional male/female sex question asked in large-scale national surveys. This measure will allow surveyors to measure sex and gender in ways that are more consistent with sociological understandings of these concepts and will allow sociologists to test their ideas about sex and gender with probability based national sample surveys.
WGS Courses
SOCI/WGS 200: Gender in Contemporary Society