Katie Barghaus, Ph.D.

Dr. Katie Barghaus is the Executive Director of the Penn Early Childhood and Family Research Center (PECF) and a senior research investigator with the Actionable Intelligence for Social Policy Network at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Barghaus contributes her expertise in quantitative methodology, measurement, partnership-based research, and social policy to conduct applied research that informs high-priority policy issues at the local, state, and national levels. Dr. Barghaus aims to build long-term research-practice-public partnerships in which members work collaboratively to build usable knowledge that helps young children and their families thrive. Her current work includes developing and using integrated data models to inform policy and practice, conducting multi-methods inquiries of disproportionate and disparate outcomes of children and families of color involved in the child welfare system, developing and implementing evidence-based, practical, responsive, and sustainable resources that adults can use to support children’s social and emotional learning skill growth, and developing and validating high-quality measures of the strengths and needs of young children and their families and to inform effective and equitable action. Dr. Barghaus earned her Ph.D. in quantitative methods from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education where she was also a pre-doctoral fellow with the Institute of Education Sciences.