PhD in Sociology

Victoria Hoverman, 2017

Vicki Hoverman earned her PhD and MA in Sociology and her BA in Psychology all from George Mason University. Her areas of expertise include survey research methodologies and health and illness. Currently, Vicki is working full-time as a Research Associate on the Instrument Design, Evaluation, and Analysis (IDEA) Services Team at Westat in Rockville, MD.  At Westat, Vicki contributes to the design and evaluation of survey instruments, analyzes quantitative and qualitative data for projects and reports, and assists with the pre-testing and usability evaluation of questionnaires and study materials.

While at George Mason University, Vicki worked for over a year as a graduate research assistant at the Cochrane Collaboration College for Policy, contributing to research related to health policy. In addition, Vicki worked for four and a half years as a graduate research assistant at the Center for Social Science Research (CSSR), and served concurrently as the lab manager for four of those years in the CSSR Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI) Survey Lab. While in these roles, Vicki conducted various forms of quantitative and qualitative research, programmed web-based and telephone surveys, trained interviewers, performed data analysis, assisted in writing final reports, and managed data collection for 20 separate telephone and web-based survey research projects. 

Vicki's past academic research includes conducting surveys on factors leading to perceived community HIV/AIDS stigma amongst Black, White, and Hispanic men who have sex with men, HIV stigma amongst college students, Cambodian Youth Dance as a way of bridging the cultural gap between first generation Cambodian Americans and their immigrant parents, and modern racism in the workplace. Presently, Vicki is conducting research for several federal agencies related to various health topics, through her work at Westat. In addition, Vicki continues to work towards the eradication of HIV/AIDS stigma by devoting her spare time to serving as the Chair of the Scientific Committee for the International Conference on Stigma at Howard University.