Scott Beach retired on Sept. 30 after 32 years working at the University of Pittsburgh, where he got his PhD in social psychology in 1993.
Prior to receiving his PhD, Beach served as a graduate student researcher at the University Center for Social and Urban Research (UCSUR) and was hired in September 1993 by Steven Manners to work in the UCSUR Survey Research Program.
In 1999, Beach was named Director of the Survey Research Program at UCSUR. In addition to this role, he served as UCSUR associate director between 2010 and 2016, and was named interim UCSUR director in 2016, serving in this capacity until this year.
Beach has directed dozens of large-scale surveys covering a broad range of topics. In addition to his work in survey methodology and research design, Beach has published in areas such as aging and caregiver stress, elder abuse, and technology and aging. His work on elder abuse, funded primarily by the National Institute on Aging, has focused on financial exploitation of older adults, use of survey technology to improve self-reporting of elder abuse, racial/ethnic disparities in abuse, and screening and detection methods. His recent work in family caregiving has focused on the impact of caregiver burden and stress on the ability to provide quality care and potential neglect.
Beach is on the executive committee of the Center for Caregiving Research, Education and Policy at Pitt's Health Policy Institute. He served as co-director of the National Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Family Support, funded by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research. He was elected a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America in 2017 in recognition of outstanding achievement and exemplary contributions to the field of gerontology.