William McDougall Distinguished Professor of Public Policy
Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience
Duke University
Durham, North Carolina, United States
Kenneth A. Dodge is a clinical and developmental psychologist, having earned his B.A. in psychology at Northwestern University in 1975 and his Ph.D. in psychology at Duke University in 1978. Prior to joining the faculty at Duke, Dodge served on the faculty at Indiana University, the University of Colorado, and Vanderbilt University. Dodge’s research is directed toward understanding how problem behaviors such as delinquency, substance use, school dropout, and child abuse develop across the lifespan, how programs can be developed to prevent these problems, and how public policy can be shaped to improve the public health of communities. He formulated and tested a model of how children’s early experiences of adversity lead them to process social information in biased ways that unfortunately turn into problem behavior outcomes. He has used these findings to create interventions to promote child well-being. With colleagues, he developed the Fast Track intervention program to prevent chronic violence in high-risk children and the Family Connects Program to prevent child abuse in the first years of life.
Dodge has been involved in Parenting Across Cultures since its beginning in 2008.
