Census of Medical Examiners and Coroners' Offices

The Census of Medical Examiners and Coroners’ Offices (CMEC) is a census of all offices conducting Medicolegal Death Investigation (MDI) in the U.S. The census was conducted once previously in 2008. The goal of the census is to obtain administrative characteristics of medical examiner and coroners’ (ME/C) offices, such as the type of office, number and type of employees, and accreditation. It will also seek information on workload, policies, standardization, resources, and needs of ME/C offices. Under this award RTI will design and administer the CMEC with FY 2018 as a reference year. The main tasks include 1) data quality assessment of previous CMEC; 2) convening an expert panel review in order to revise the CMEC instrument; 3) devising a primarily web-based data collection system with alternate forms of submission available as backups; 4) cognitive testing of the new instrument; 5) developing a complete, up-to-date frame of ME/C offices; 6) administering the census and collecting the data; 7) assisting BJS with analyses and publication of data; 8) conducting any necessary non-response bias study; 8) producing and delivering to the archives a public use file of the data.

(CA/NCF)

Note: This project contains a research and/or development component as defined in applicable law.