Sam Beckwith

Background

About Sam Beckwith

As a Senior Research Analyst in the Youth Development program area at Child Trends, I conduct both qualitative and quantitative research in multiple contexts, manage research projects, and carry out performance management. As a qualitative researcher, I observe youth-serving programs, lead focus groups, and conduct semi-structured interviews; I have also led cognitive interviews to inform the redesign of a large federal survey on child care. My quantitative skills include regression analysis, cleaning and manipulating large national surveys as well as administrative data, and factor analysis. At Child Trends, I'm part of a team that developed El Camino, an innovative teen pregnancy prevention program for Latinos that takes a goal-setting approach to comprehensive sex and relationship education. In addition to contributing to the design of El Camino, I train facilitators and analyze pilot outcomes data. I am also part of a team updating a complex microsimulation model that identifies how a wide variety of life circumstances can predict health outcomes and other aspects of well-being throughout the life course. I managed a structural update to the Opportunity Index (an online resource measuring state- and county-level opportunity in terms of health, education, economic well-being, and community well-being), and continue to lead the research team that collects and analyzes its data. My experience in performance management includes analyzing data and writing periodic reports for parent education programs in the Southwest; training service providers on the development of logic models; and developing a self-assessment for organizations to examine how they infuse positive youth development into their services and policies. I am skilled in using Stata and NVivo data analysis software and am a conversational speaker of Spanish.