Laura Steighner
Laura Steighner, a principal research scientist at AIR, has experience contributing to applied research in the fields of industrial/organizational psychology and healthcare workforce research since 1996. Her areas of expertise include test development, program evaluation, training measurement and evaluation, performance measurement, facilitation of multi-disciplinary expert panels and focus groups.
Currently, Dr. Steighner serves as the project director for the development of test items and forms for a nationally administered, high-stakes standardized exam. Additional work in the area of health care and patient safety include conducting a socio-technical probabilistic risk assessment on the occurrence of surgical site infections in ambulatory surgery centers; conducting an environmental scan of patient safety education and training programs to develop a searchable catalog of programs; conducting an impact evaluation of the Patient Safety Improvement Corps (PSIC) training for AHRQ; conducting a national evaluation for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to improve the retention of workers providing home and community-based care services using surveys, structured interviews, and focus groups for data collection; developing structured guidance to determine the severity of deficient nursing home practices; developing TeamSTEPPSTM, a medical team skills training program for which AIR received the M. Scott Myers Award from the Society for Industrial/Organizational Psychology.
Prior to joining AIR, Dr. Steighner developed and managed qualifying exams for the U.S. Postal Service. Dr. Steighner has a research background in performance measurement and professional experience in test development and validation, conducting both quantitative and qualitative research, and designing and conducting training program evaluations.