Virginia M. Lesser
Director, Survey Research Center, Oregon State University
Dr. Virginia M. Lesser, Ph. D has been the Director of the Oregon State University Survey Research Center since 1993. In her tenure at the Survey Research Center, Dr. Lesser has been responsible for directing over 100 major survey projects. Typically, Dr. Lesser is responsible for development of the survey design, logistics in conducting the survey, data analysis, and writing a final report documenting the survey design, implementation and analysis. She advises clients, on how to interpret the survey results, the response rates, the role of weighting adjustments (if applied), and other survey issues.
In the course of conducting Survey Research Center surveys, Dr. Lesser has collaborated with staff from 12 different state of Oregon agencies. The majority of these surveys involved collaboration with the Oregon Department of Transportation. In addition, Dr. Lesser has collaborated with both the Oregon Department of Human Resources and the Oregon State University College of Health and Human Performance on studies of people with disabilities.
Dr. Lesser’s main research area is sampling and survey methodology. She is currently a Principal Investigator in an Environmental Protection Agency cooperative research agreement investigating the impact of nonresponse on survey results. She also represents Oregon State University on a United States Department of Agriculture regional coordinating committee whose purpose is develop better survey methods.
Dr. Lesser can be contacted at lesser@stat.orst.edu .