Tara Becker, PhD, is a senior public administration analyst at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. Her duties include conducting research on gender, racial, and ethnic disparities in health insurance coverage in California and collaborating with California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) funders and researchers in designing and implementing policy evaluation studies. Her research at CHIS focuses on survey measurement and data quality. Becker co-leads the CHIS sexual orientation and gender identity workgroup.
Becker's research interests focus on quantitative methodology, measurement, and the relationship between labor market and family decisions. Her recent work assesses how the provision of employer-sponsored coverage shapes family formation and dissolution decisions. She has expertise in demographic methods, multilevel modeling, latent class analysis, survey research methods, and nonparametric methods for small data sets.
Prior to joining the Center, Becker worked as a UCLA/RAND postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Health Policy and Management at UCLA, where she trained in U.S. health policy. She also previously worked as a biostatistician at the University of Wisconsin–Madison's Department of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics, where she provided statistical consultation, study design, data analysis, and grant-writing support services to medical and public health researchers.
She has collaborated with researchers on a diverse array of topics such as racial disparities in obesity among adolescents, health-related quality of life among children and adolescents with cystic fibrosis, Internet addiction among college students, and comparing physician and patient assessments of risk for stent and coronary bypass surgery among patients at risk of a heart attack or stroke.
Becker received her PhD in sociology, an MS in statistics, and a BS in mathematics and sociology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
