Ryan Callahan has expertise in developing survey methodology and managing large-scale multimode data collection for employment, disability, and health projects.
Callahan serves as the survey director for the National Beneficiary Survey for the Social Security Administration. This large, nationally representative survey gathers critical information on the employment, disabilities, and health of Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income beneficiaries. He also serves as survey director on prominent studies for the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), including a random assignment demonstration program to examine the effectiveness of self-employment training and an implementation study of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. Callahan directed the survey data collection from study participants for the national-scale Workforce Investment Act Gold Standard Evaluation for DOL.
Before joining Mathematica in 2010, Ryan worked as a research manager, overseeing data collection and evaluations for federal and private clients. He has presented his work at conferences including those of the American Association for Public Opinion Research and the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research. He holds a master’s degree in economics from Virginia Tech.
This brief presents findings from a random assignment experiment to test the effect of offering a prepaid incentive of $2 to National Beneficiary Survey sample members. Overall, the prepaid incentive increased the survey completion rate by 1.6 percentage points.
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