Dr. Janis Kupersmidt
iRT President and Senior Research Associate
Ph.D., Psychology, Duke University

Dr. Kupersmidt is the President and Senior Research Associate of Innovation Research & Training ("iRT"), which she also founded in 1999. iRT's mission is to develop empirically validated assessment tools, and prevention and treatment programs for substance abuse and delinquency. At iRT, Dr. Kupersmidt leads a multi-disciplinary team that has received both public and private grants on a range of topics to create products and services including media literacy education for substance abuse prevention and reproductive health, training of youth mentors, school-based mindfulness training, web-based social information processing assessment, web-based emotion recognition assessment, and cognitive behavioral therapy with substance abusing delinquent adolescents.

The iRT research team led by Dr. Kupersmidt has developed two media literacy substance abuse prevention programs, Media Detective, for elementary school-aged children, and Media Ready, for middle school-aged children. Both programs have been accepted for review by the SAMHSA National Registry of Evidence-Based Programs and Practices (NREPP) Related to substance abuse prevention efforts.

The majority of her scientific contributions have been in the areas of:

• peer relationship problems such as peer rejection and peer victimization;
• aggression and delinquency in children and adolescents;
• social and emotional learning and assessment;
• stress and coping in children and adolescents; and
• the effects of exposure to violence in children and adolescents.

Dr. Kupersmidt is very committed to enhancing the blending of research-and-practice activities through working closely with community-based intervention programs. At iRT, she leads a multi-disciplinary team that has provided strategic consulting on program development and information technology for assessment and monitoring purposes; training and continuing education; development and evaluation of preventive and treatment intervention programs; and outcome and process program evaluations of multi-site intervention projects.

Dr. Kupersmidt has clinical experience with a wide range of populations of children and adolescents including:

• aggressive, rejected or peer-victimized children in school settings;
• rural children of migrant and seasonal farm workers;
• incarcerated adolescents; and
• substance-abusing adolescents.

Dr Kupersmidt was a tenured faculty member at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Psychology Department for 15 years, where she taught both graduate and undergraduate courses in Child Clinical Psychology and conducted research studies. She also taught at the University of Virginia for three years. Dr. Kupersmidt has been an investigator at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill since 1988. She has over 50 peer-reviewed publications including empirical papers, chapters, and an edited book; over 100 scientific presentations; and has served as the Principal Investigator (PI) or co-PI on many federal, state, and private research grants.

Dr. Kupersmidt received her Ph.D. from Duke University in 1985 with specialization in child clinical psychology. She completed her clinical internship in at Yale University in 1984 and received her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology in 1978 from Douglass College of Rutgers University.

Selected publications:

Scull, T. M., Kupersmidt, J. B., Parker, A. E., Elmore, K. C., & Benson, J. W. (in press)., Adolescents’ Media-related Cognitions and Substance Use in the Context of Parental and Peer Influences. Journal of Youth and Adolescence.

Baker, C. N., Kupersmidt, J. B., Voegler-Lee, M. E., Arnold, D. H., & Willoughby, M. T. (in press). Predicting teacher participation in a classroom-based, integrated preventive intervention for preschoolers. Early Childhood Research Quarterly.

Neiss, M. B., Sedikides, C., Shahinfar, A., & Kupersmidt, J. B. (2006). Self-evaluation in naturalistic context: The case of juvenile offenders. British Journal of Social Psychology, 45, 499-518.

J. B. Kupersmidt & K. A. Dodge (Eds.),  (2004).  Children's peer relations:  From development to intervention.  Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Press.

Kupersmidt, J. B., Coie, J. D., & Howell, J. (2003).  Building resilience in children exposed to negative peer influences.  In K. Maton, B. Leadbeater et al. (Eds.), Fostering resilient children, youth, families and communities:  Strengths-based research and policy (pp. 251-268).  American Psychological Association Press.

Leff, S. S., Kupersmidt, J. B., & Powers, T. (2003).  Young females cognitions of their relationally aggressive peers.  Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 49, 28-54.

Khatri, P., & Kupersmidt, J. B. (2003).  Aggression, peer victimization, and social relationships among rural Indian youth.  International Journal of Behavioral Development, 27, 87-95.

Kupersmidt, J. B., Shahinfar, A., & Voegler-Lee, M. E. (2002).  Children’s Exposure to Community Violence.  In A. M. La Greca, W. K. Silverman, E. M. Vernberg & M. C. Roberts (Eds.).  Helping children cope with disasters and terrorism.  (pp. 381-401).  Washington, DC:  APA Books.

Matza, L. S., Kupersmidt, J. B., & Glenn, D. M. (2001).  Adolescents’ perceptions and standards of their relationships with their parents as a function of sociometric status.  Journal of Research on Adolescence, 11, 245-272.

Shahinfar, A., Kupersmidt, J. B., & Matza, L. S. (2001).  The relation between exposure to violence and social information-processing among incarcerated adolescents.  Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 110, 136-141.

Willoughby, M., Kupersmidt, J. B., & Bryant, D. (2001).  Overt and covert dimensions of antisocial behavior in early childhood.  Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 29, 177-187.

Khatri, P., Kupersmidt, J. B., & Patterson, C. J. (2000).  Aggression and peer victimization as predictors of self-reported behavioral and emotional adjustment.   Aggressive Behavior, 26(5), 345-358.

Kupersmidt, J. B., Bryant, D., & Willoughby, M. T. (2000).  Prevalence of aggressive behaviors among preschoolers in Head Start and community child care programs.  Behavioral Disorders, 26, 42-52. 

Bryant, D., Vizzard, L., Willoughby,M., & Kupersmidt, J. B. (1999). A review of interventions for preschoolers with aggressive and disruptive behavior. Early Education and Development, 10, 47-68.

Kupersmidt, J. B., Sigda, K. B., Voegler, M. E. & Sedikides, C. (1999).  Social self-discrepancy theory and loneliness during childhood and adolescence (pp. 263-279).  In K. Rotenberg & S. Hymel (Eds.) Loneliness in childhood and adolescence.  New York: Cambridge University Press.

Kupersmidt, J. B., & Martin, S. L. (1997).  Mental health of children of migrant and seasonal farm workers:  A pilot study.  Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 36, 1-9.

Kupersmidt, J. B., Buchele, K. S., Voegler, M. E. & Sedikides, C. (1996).  Social self-discrepancy:  A theory relating peer relations problems and school maladjustment (pp. 66-97).  In J. Juvonen & K. R. Wentzel (Eds.) Social motivation:  Understanding children's school adjustment.  New York:  Cambridge University Press.