Susan Straus is an adjunct behavioral scientist at RAND. Her research focuses on the social and organizational impacts of information and communication technologies, with specific interests in factors that influence adoption and effective use of these technologies in diverse contexts including national security, education, health care, and law enforcement. Current and recent projects address simulation-based training needs for Army clinical personnel and law enforcement officers; the mix of live, virtual, and constructive training for Air Force aircrews and Army collective training; virtual reality training technologies for law enforcement officer training; staffing and training needs to support electronic health records adoption in the Coast Guard; recruiting, training, and retaining Army Cryptologic Language Analysts; distributed communities of practice among K–12 STEM educators; evaluation of the National Science Foundations' Digital Library/Distributed Learning Program; development and measurement of key attributes of Army leaders; and health information exchange in the military health system.
Straus has extensive experience in program evaluation, experimental and quasi-experimental methods, qualitative methods including interviews and focus groups, and survey design and analysis. She has published her work in numerous RAND reports as well as in journals such as Journal of Applied Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Small Group Research, and Human-Computer Interaction.
Straus received her Ph.D. and M.A. in industrial and organizational psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her B.A. in psychology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Ph.D. and M.A. in industrial/organizational psychology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; B.A. in psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
