Applied Survey Research
PO Box 1927
Watsonville
CAUSA
95077
Biographical Sketch: Susan Brutschy is the co-founder and President of Applied Survey Research, a non-profit community research organization. She is an experienced sociologist and has spearheaded the development and implementation of hundreds of social research projects over the course of her 25-year career. Since assuming the presidency of ASR in 1990, Ms. Brutschy has played an active part in the expansion of ASR services to include policy level research in a host of areas with a special emphasis on strategic activities resulting from data collection and analysis.
Her recent accomplishments include the use of results-based accountability (RBA) pioneered by Mark Friedman of the Fiscal Policies Institute to link program performance to community results and indicators, effecting the achievement of community, program, and personal changes, using evaluation data to help initiatives and efforts sustain themselves, and develop prevention-based research strategies and community-wide assessments. Over the last few years, she has lead many projects using results-based accountability including the yearly Santa Cruz County Community Assessment Project (CAP), which functions as a community report card with over 120 indicators, First Five evaluations for a community investment program and for the school readiness program, and the Santa Clara County Children’s Agenda, which is setting county-wide goals for children ages 0-18 based on data from the Santa Clara County Children’s Report. Other RBA activities include conference presentations on the subject and technical assistance; coaching.
Other accomplishments include community needs assessment studies for various hospital consortia throughout the state to meet legislative requirements, as well as the design and implementation of nationally linked evaluations such as both the single and multi-agency evaluations for the Greenbook project. Ms. Brutschy graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz, with Highest Honors in Sociology and was the recipient of undergraduate awards for her research in designing and implementing quantitative assessments of community opinion for the Social Research Unit.