Catherine Billington

Overview

Catherine Billington, PhD, is an Associate Vice President for Survey Management and Design. She brings more than 20 years of experience in research operations, with a strong focus on design, testing, training, computer-assisted interviewing (CAI) and multimode data collection, and workflow efficiencies. Billington is the Westat project director for several studies, including the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS), which gathers information on a nationally representative sample of Medicare beneficiaries ages 65 and older. On NHATS, she is responsible for the overall design, testing, and fielding of instruments and equipment; training field staff; data operations, systems, and hard-copy materials; data delivery and documentation; and the public-facing website. She oversees the budgets and data operations on all her studies.

Her areas of expertise include data quality across modes, using varied technologies for data collection; formal instrument testing; survey implementation and processing; data collection protocols in non-clinical settings using CAI and tablet-based applications, and data dissemination. She also supports initiatives using machine learning or other automated data solutions to improve workflow efficiency. Billington supports and enforces data security policies and standards.

Education

• PhD, Child Language, University of Kansas
• MA, Linguistics, University of Hawaii
• BA (magna cum laude), Linguistics, Université d’Ottawa