Principal Investigators

Principal Investigator of the MTF Main study, which includes school sampling and recruiting, in-school surveys, and analyses of both the in-school and panel data (he is also co-investigator on the MTF Panel study). He is a Research Professor at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research. He received his Ph.D. degree in Sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a MPH degree from Johns Hopkins University. His work focuses on trends in substance use, with an emphasis on disentangling how these trends vary by age, historical period, and birth cohort membership. Other research interests include the rapid growth of vaping in recent years and its long term consequences, as well as the effects of recreational marijuana laws on adolescent substance use.

Curriculum Vitae (PDF)

Principal Investigator of the Monitoring the Future Panel Study, which is a national study following former school age MTF participants from ages 18 to 65 since 1976, and co-investigator on the MTF Main study. Her published research focuses on the development of substance use and consequences across the lifespan. Her interests include motivations for substance use, the prevention of health risk behaviors, statistical methods for modeling behavior and behavior change, and mobile and web-based survey methodology. She has been the PI of 10+ NIH-funded projects and Co-Investigator on many others.  Her other current NIH-funded R01 projects focus on high-intensity drinking, simultaneous alcohol and marijuana use, and adaptive interventions to reduce consequences of young adult substance use.

Curriculum Vitae (PDF)

Principal Investigator of the Monitoring the Future study for its first 42 years –from its inception in 1975 through 2017 (he is now co-investigator on both MTF grants). He holds degrees from Williams, Harvard, and the University of Michigan. A social psychologist by training, he has served as advisor to the White House, Congress, and many other national and international bodies and has conducted research on a wide range of issues, including the use of alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drugs; policy evaluation; the functioning of American high schools; behaviors influencing the spread of HIV; and childhood obesity. His research interests also include international comparative studies and the application of survey research to social problems generally. He is the recipient of the UM Regents Award for Distinguished Public Service and the 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA).

Curriculum Vitae  (PDF)

Co-investigator on the Monitoring the Future study (both grants) since its inception. He received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1962. In 1965 he initiated the Youth in Transition project, which he directed for a decade. That research led him to conceive and propose the Monitoring the Future project, which he and Lloyd Johnston designed in the early 1970s, and launched with funding in 1974. He has authored three books a nd many articles and chapters based on Monitoring the Future Research. His scientific publications focus primarily on youth and social issues, including drug use and attitudes about drugs, as well as other values, attitudes, and behaviors of youth. Other past research and publications dealt with the all-volunteer force and views about the military, as well as Michigan citizens’ and physicians’ views about physician-assisted death.

Curriculum Vitae  (PDF)

Co-investigator on the Monitoring the Future study (both grants). He received his Ph.D. degree in Psychology from the University of Michigan in 1975 and has been associated with the Monitoring the Future project since then. His publications deal with alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drug use and related attitudes and beliefs. His research interests include causes and consequences of drug use, driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, social epidemiology of drug use, and longitudinal survey data analysis techniques.

Curriculum Vitae (PDF)

Katherine focuses her research on life course epidemiology with particular attention to substance use and psychiatric disorders. Her empirical research has documented a narrowing gender gap in the prevalence and course of alcohol abuse and dependence over time, as well as the effects of changing social norms on birth cohort effects in marijuana and alcohol use in adolescence. Dr. Keyes is an expert on methodological issues in age-period-cohort effect estimation and has conducted age-period-cohort analysis on a range of health outcomes, including autism, obesity, breast cancer, and substance disorders. Her work has highlighted and extended several existing age-period-cohort methods, most notably including the median polish method. Dr. Keyes also has explored the effects of early life exposures on adolescent and adult health, documenting long-term consequences of child maltreatment on internalizing and externalizing psychiatric disorders in adulthood and the sensitizing effects of childhood maltreatment on exposures to stress in adulthood.

She received her Ph.D. in Psychology from Macquarie University in Australia. Dr. Smith is an international expert on life course/lifespan developmental psychology emphasizing gerontology; her expertise spans many aspects of functioning in midlife and old age including health, well-being, and cognition. As a collaborating investigator, she brings her expertise on survey measurement of health, well-being, and cognition in middle-aged and older adults to the group, consulting with MTF on development of the new age 65 MTF Panel survey and improvements to the current middle adult surveys.