Tamara Cohen Daley, PhD, is a Senior Study Director at Westat. She has both lived and worked in India on and off throughout her life. Over the past 15 years, Dr. Daley has designed and conducted more than half a dozen research and evaluation studies on disability in India. These projects include the first national study of parents of children with autism in India; a national survey of diagnostic practices and beliefs among paediatricians, psychiatrists, and psychologists; a comparison of paediatrician practices and beliefs about autism over a 10-year period; a comprehensive review of published literature on autism; and the effect of the popular media on awareness of autism amongst the general public.
In addition to research in India, Dr. Daley has led or contributed to the design, implementation, and analysis of multiple research projects involving children, adolescents, and families in the U.S. and elsewhere. These projects include work in rural Kenya, such as identifying changes in child cognitive scores over time and the role of classroom quality; research on mental health problems in second generation Cambodian refugees and intergenerational transmission of trauma; longitudinal studies of children with developmental delay; and evaluation of the implementation of the U.S. federal special education law using large-scale national datasets. Dr. Daley currently is engaged in separate evaluations of human trafficking projects located in India, Qatar and Cameroon.
Dr. Daley received a BA in psychology from Grinnell College, a Fulbright Scholarship to undertake research in India, and an MA and PhD in clinical psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles. She completed postdoctoral work at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
