Sample Projects

  • Community Health Worker Survey
    Massachusetts Department of Public Health

    This ongoing survey is studying community health workers’ job roles and scope, training, supervision, level of integration into the health care delivery system, and other job issues related to workforce recruitment and retention. UMass Medical School’s survey research staff is involved in the project team and responsible for developing the SNAP web-based tool.
  • Massachusetts Health Quality Partners (MHQP) Survey
    Massachusetts Medicaid program, MassHealth

    This on-going survey measures and reports on the quality of health care services provided to residents of Massachusetts. UMass Medical School staff is part of the project team.
  • Board of Registration in Nursing Survey
    National Council of State Boards of Nursing

    This on-going surveypolls nurses practicing in randomly-selected nursing homes in Massachusetts to determine their perceptions of their facility’s culture of safety and barriers to medication error reporting.
  • MassHealth PCC Plan Pay-for-Performance Survey
    Massachusetts Medicaid program, MassHealth Primary Care Clinician (PCC) Plan


    As part of the MassHealth PCC Plan Pay-for-Performance Program, this survey established baseline measures on processes adopted by the MassHealth primary care clinicians that promote the delivery of high quality care to their patients.
  • MassHealth Nursing Facility Pay-for-Performance Survey
    Massachusetts Medicaid program, MassHealth Office of Long Term Care

    As part of the MassHealth Nursing Facility Pay-for-Performance Program, this survey collected baseline information on existence and administration of specific facility processes, including falls prevention programs, mobility programs, staff retention/turnover, and transition planning (transition with an acute care hospital and transition to community).

Survey Research

The Office of Survey Research is part of the Center for Health Policy and Research, University of Massachusetts Medical School, the commonwealth’s first and only public academic health sciences research center. We work closely with clients to develop and conduct effective, targeted surveys with maximum response rates.

The Office of Survey Research builds on the methodological expertise available from the school’s academic departments and applied research centers. Our survey research team has expertise and provides complete services in all phases of survey research, including survey planning, survey design, sample selection, data collection, data processing, data analysis and reporting.

Our extensive experience in survey research and survey methodology, combined with our exclusive focus on public health and health care issues, provides robust survey resources often needed by our clients, which include state and federal agencies and public sector organizations.

Using a broad range of survey methodology, including cognitive interviews, mixed-mode approaches, and others, the Office of Survey Research develops customized surveys that are tailored to the groups our clients want to study: patients, health care providers, and health service administrators.

Our survey research team includes a fully-staffed operations center, run by our partner, Public Sector Partners, an affiliate of UMass Medical School. In addition to cutting-edge CATI (computer-aided telephonic interviewing) and CAPI (computer-aided personal interviewing) workstations, internet-based tools, and optical mark (or character) recognition scanning, our operations center has state-of-the-art mass printing and mailing capacities. We also have access to translation and interpreter services to assist with both written and verbal survey methods.

Our key services can all be adapted to the needs of individual clients.

Key Staff

Ann Lawthers   Ann Lawthers, S.M., Sc.D.
Senior Director, Evaluation and Measurement, and Director, Clinical Policy and Projects
     
Zi Zang   Zi Zhang, M.D., M.P.H.
Director, Office of Survey Research

Learn More

Zi Zhang, M.D., M.P.H.
Zi.Zhang@umassmed.edu
(508) 856-4281