Dr. Kimberly A. Tyler is Willa Cather Professor of Sociology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Co-Director of the Longitudinal Networks Core, Rural Drug Addiction Research Center.
Her areas of research include child abuse and neglect, high-risk adolescents, sexual victimization, HIV risk behaviors, social networks, dating violence, and substance use.
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Dr. Tyler recently received a five-year R01 grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. This project uses a socio-ecological framework to examine linkages between Proximal risk factors, Affect regulation, and Coping behaviors (PAC). Specifically, we will identify factors that influence positive vs. negative coping behavior for youth experiencing homelessness (YEH) to develop a just-in-time personal support intervention that is data-driven, relevant to our population, provides individualized support, and can be sustainable outside the research setting.
This study is highly innovative as youth experiencing homelessness are a highly mobile group and oftentimes, traditional interventions where youth must come into agencies to receive the intervention do not work for many youths, especially those deemed at highest risk, who are oftentimes, the youth in most need of an intervention. Thus, a mobile app that sends messaging content and service information directly to their phone for a just-in-time intervention is highly innovative and culturally specific to this population.
Dr. Tyler also completed a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse that studied primary and secondary stressors and their association with substance use and how secondary stressors and protective social resources co-vary with substance use using ecological momentary measurement (EMA) with homeless youth and young adults. Published papers from this project appear under her list of Publications.
Dr. Tyler was previously awarded a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to study social networks and HIV risk behavior among homeless youth.
She also completed a K01 Research Career Development Award from the National Institute of Mental Health, which supported five years of funding on her research project entitled, “Neglect and Abuse Histories Among Homeless Young Adults.”
In terms of teaching interests, Dr. Tyler has taught graduate seminars on Partner Violence, High-Risk Youth and Adolescents, Child Abuse and Neglect, Family, and Aging, and Family Violence. She has also recently taught advanced level classes in Contemporary Family Issues and Perspectives on Families.
