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Debra L. Wright
Associate Director of Survey Research and Senior Survey Researcher
Debra Wright is a senior survey researcher who specializes in the design and direction of large-scale multimode and longitudinal surveys and evaluations. She has particular expertise in studies that survey vulnerable and hard-to-reach populations, such as low-income families, noncustodial parents, and people with disabilities.
Wright has worked on several projects for the Social Security Administration, including the National Beneficiary Survey (NBS) and the Consultative Examinations Project; she is now the survey director for both the new NBS—General Waves and the 12-month follow-up for the Benefit Offset National Demonstration. Both of these projects involve locating and conducting interviews with more than 8,000 beneficiaries in multiple rounds using multiple modes (computer-assisted telephone and personal interviewing).
Wright manages Mathematica’s projects under the Rehabilitation Research and Training Center (RRTC) on Disability Demographics and Statistics, and the Individual Characteristics RRTC, both for the U.S. Department of Education’s National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research. These projects aim to develop a research and training center on policies that influence employment and well-being of people with disabilities. As part of this project, Wright has designed and implemented experiments to improve methods used to interview people with disabilities. Her work with families includes oversight of data collection for the Low-Income Couples and the Child Support Employment Demonstration, a project that involves randomly assigning and interviewing 12,000 noncustodial parents in eight sites and conducting follow-up interviews one year later to evaluate the impact of employment interventions.
Wright is the author of several papers on multimode data collection methodologies, the impact of survey mode on responses to sensitive questions, and methods for interviewing people with disabilities. She is a member of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, serves on the American Statistical Association Committee on Statistics and Disability, and has co-chaired the Federal Computer-Assisted Survey Information Collection Conference session on Multimode Surveys for several years. Wright holds a Ph.D. in human development and family studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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- Areas of Expertise
- Key Projects
- Professional Activities
- Publications
- Design and direction of large-scale multimode and longitudinal surveys
- Studies that survey vulnerable and hard-to-reach populations, such as low-income families and individuals with disabilities
- Rehabilitation Research and Training Centers on Disability Demographics and Statistics and Individual Characteristics
- National Beneficiary Survey – General Waves
- Benefit Offset National Demonstration Follow-up
- Child Support Employment Demonstration
- Member of American Statistical Association Committee on Statistics and Disability
- Member of the American Association for Public Opinion Research
- "Is There a Trade-off Between Quality and Cost? Telephone Versus Face-to-Face Interviewing of Persons with Disabilities" (February 2012)
- "Conducting Surveys with Proxies: Evaluating a Standardized Measure to Determine Need" (July 2012)
- "2010 National Beneficiary Survey: Methodology and Descriptive Statistics" (April 2012)