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Child and Family Research Seminar Series
2007-2008
Wed Nov 28
Jenni Owen
Jenni Owen is the associate director for policy and translation at the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke University.
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Wed Feb 20
The Durham Family Initiative (DFI) research evaluation team has been examining the impact of DFI, a comprehensive, community-based prevention program addressing child maltreatment in Durham County. Though analyses are ongoing, the current presentation will present preliminary statistical findings regarding the overall impact of DFI on the rates of maltreatment. Emphasis will be on the technical aspects of the evaluation and the statistical approaches being used to answer the primary research questions (in particular, interrupted time series models). Input and discussion about the methodology is invited.
The DFI Research Evaluation Team is part of the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke University. Please bring a brown bag lunch.
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Fri May 9
Ann Brewster is a research associate in the Transdisciplinary Prevention Research Center at Duke University. Patrick Malone is an associate professor of quantitative psychology at the University of South Carolina.
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NIDA Science to Service Seminar Series
2007-2008
Wed Sept 26
Martin Fishbein is the Harry C. Coles Jr. Distinguished professor in Communication, and Director of the Health Communication Program in the Public Policy Center of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.
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Wed Oct 3
Jed E. Rose is the director of the Center for Nicotine and Smoking Cessation Research and Medical Research Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center. Dr. Rose is considered one of the leading authorities on the treatment of nicotine addiction.
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Wed Oct 24
12-1:30 pm, Sanford Institute, Rhodes Conference Room
Lecture
Since its inception in 1936, the William T. Grant Foundation has had a remarkable constancy of purpose: to further the understanding of human behavior through research. The Foundation's mission focuses on improving the lives of youth ages 8 to 25 in the United States. They invest primarily in high quality empirical studies. Its current research interests are understanding and improving social settings such as families, schools, peer groups, and organizations, and how these social settings affect youth. The Foundation's interests also focus on the use and influence of scientific evidence in policy and practice.
Edward Seidman is Program Senior Vice president for the William T. Grant Foundation.
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Wed Nov 7
Researchers at the Duke ADHD Program, in collaboration with colleagues at the Center for Nicotine and Smoking Cessation Research, are conducting a study to better understand why individuals with ADHD are at increased risk for smoking.
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Thurs Dec 6
12-1:30 pm, Old Chemistry Building, Room 116
Antonio Morgan-Lopez has designed a statistical model that allows drug treatment researchers to use traditional drug treatment groups for their studies and to run trials. Due to the fluid, ever-changing membership of these groups (e.g., AA and NA), researchers have had to rely on individual therapy sessions or create groups with controlled membership to ensure valid outcomes. Hear how Dr. Morgan-Lopez' model works and how it provides the same validation without the expenses (time and money) involved in setting up and running one-on-one therapy sessions and controlled groups.
Dr. Morgan-Lopez is a research quantitative psychologist with RTI International. He has over 10 years of experience in the development and application of quantitative methods in prevention and treatment research. He has extensive experience in the etiology and prevention of mental illness and substance use among adolescents, with a particular interest in methodological issues in substance abuse and alcoholism treatment research. Lunch served. RSVP required.
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Wed Jan 9
A longitudinal community study (the Great Smoky Mountains Study) has been following a representative sample of American Indian and Anglo children since 1993. In 1996 a casino opened on the Indian reservation, and since then every tribal member has received a bi-annual income supplement amounting to around $6000. Analyses after four years of the supplement showed a marked reduction in behavioral symptoms in Indian youth whose families were moved out of poverty by the supplement.
In the analyses to be presented, the impact of exposure to a family income supplement by age 21on drug use and abuse in early adulthood will be examined. Findings demonstrate a dose-response effect of length of exposure to the income supplement while the youth remained in the family home, but a different effect once the youth took over as recipients of their own income supplement after they left school. Implications will be discussed for using income supplementation as a preventive strategy.
Jane Costello is professor of medical psychology in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University Medical Center. She is part of the the Center for Developmental Epidemiology which brings together researchers from different disciplines in order to advance the understanding of the origins, course, and prevention of mental illness across the life course. Costello is currently directing the eighth annual wave of data collection for the Great Smoky Mountains Study, a longitudinal study of the development of psychiatric and substance abuse disorders and access to mental health care, in a representative sample of 1400 children and adolescents living in the southeastern United States.
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Wed Feb 6
Peer attributes other than smoking have received little attention in the research on adolescent smoking, even though the developmental literature suggests the importance of multiple dimensions of adolescent friendships and peer relations. Social network analysis is used to measure the structure of peer relations (i.e., indicators of having friends, friendship quality, and status among peers) and peer smoking (i.e., friend and school smoking). The contribution of these peer attributes, and interactions between them, to trajectories of smoking from age 11 to 17 is examined using three-level hierarchical growth models. Data are from a longitudinal sample of 6,579 students in three school districts assessed in school every six months from spring 2002 to spring 2004. Findings suggest a greater complexity in the peer context of smoking than previously recognized.
Susan Ennett is an associate professor and doctoral program director, Health Behavior and Health Education, UNC-Chapel Hill School of Public Health. Her research focuses on understanding and preventing health risk behaviors among adolescents in the general population as well as among high-risk youth. Her current research includes a longitudinal study of the social context of adolescent alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use and a national study of substance use prevention practices in middle schools. In other recent research, she has studied substance use and risky sexual behavior among runaway and homeless youth and collaborated on the development and evaluation of a family intervention to prevent youth tobacco and alcohol use. RSVP
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Thur Mar 27
12-1:30 pm, Sanford Institute, Rhodes Conference Room
Many teens experiment with drugs and alcohol and parents, teachers and policy-makers want to know the consequences of adolescent substance use. Studies that have followed teens into adulthood have shown that exposure to illicit drugs and alcohol, especially prior to age 15, statistically predicts a number of adult physical and mental health problems. However, nagging doubts remain regarding whether substance use affects teens' later lives causally.
New findings from the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study, a 30-year prospective study, are presented to address whether there is evidence that early substance exposure is a causal factor in teens' future lives (“are drugs bad for kids?”) or, alternatively, whether teens following an at-risk conduct-problem trajectory are simply more likely to be exposed to alcohol and illicit substances during adolescence and to experience poor adult outcomes (“do bad kids do drugs?”)
Candice Odgers is an assistant professor of psychology and social behavior at the University of California - Irvine. Her interests include the role of gender, family psychiatric history and neighborhood context in the progression of childhood conduct disorder; methods for facilitating causal inference in observational studies; and the role of genes and environment following early teenage alcohol exposure.
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