Faculty members at the CRHC have expertise in survey instrument selection, design, deployment, and evaluation. This includes particular expertise in using state-of-the-art techniques to generate questionnaires and interviews, identify platforms and methods for survey deployment appropriate to the target participant, maximize response rates, conduct psychometric evaluation of instruments, and recommend instrument modifications based on these evaluations. We have expertise in the full range of survey domains including demographics, psychosocial, quality-of-life, social media, patient reported outcomes, health utility measures, and many others.

Faculty

Janel Hanmer, MD, PhD

Dr. Hanmer's primary research focus is on health-related quality of life measurement, particularly health utility measurement. Her recent work has been focused on developing a new health utility score for the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS). Dr. Hanmer has expertise in secondary analysis of nationally representative survey datasets such as MEPS, NHIS, and NHANES.

Tamar Krishnamurti, PhD

Dr. Krishnamurti has had more than 15 years experience conducting surveys, including experimental survey work and national samples. She developed a validated psychometric measure differentiating sexual desire from sexual pleasure (The partner-specific sexual liking and sexual wanting scale).  

Galen E. Switzer, PhD

For more than 20 years Dr. Switzer has developed and evaluated clinical and psychosocial research measures and compiled validated measures for research projects across multiple contexts. As part of his completed and ongoing projects, his research group has collected and analyzed questionnaire and interview data from >10,000 participants. 

Lan Yu, PhD

Dr. Yu's research has focused on applying advanced psychometric theories, such as item-response theory and structural equation modeling to health-related outcomes. She has been the lead psychometrician for the NIH Roadmap Initiative, Patient-Reported Outcome Measurement Information System (PROMIS) Pittsburgh research site since 2007. Her research interests include large survey data, secondary data analysis, psychometrics, and item-bank development for various patient-reported outcomes.