Faculty Profile
Rob Turrisi
Dr. Rob Turrisi is currently a Professor at Penn State University with a joint appointment in the Department of Biobehavioral Health Prevention Research Center. Turrisi received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology (with an emphasis in Decision Making and Quantitative Methods) in 1988 from the University at Albany, State University of New York. His research focus is in the application of psychological theories of behavioral decision-making and multivariate statistical modeling to adolescent health issues and family relationships.
Toward this end, Dr. Turrisi has conducted numerous federally funded large scale nationally based research projects examining the decision making strategies used by children, adolescents, college students, parents, married couples, individuals in the hospitality industry, restaurant and college bar patrons, to name a few. Dr. Turrisi has also conducted parent-based interventions to prevent adolescent drinking, drunk driving, binge drinking, skin cancer, and unintended pregnancies.
From 1988 to 1995, Dr. Turrisi served as the Director of the Prevention of Adolescent Drinking Program at the Center for Applied Psychological Research, University at Albany. During his tenure, he received over $2,000,000 in the highly competitive National Institute of Health (NIH) federal grant program to study teen decision-making and parent-teen communication with respect to teen drinking and drunk driving.
From 1995 to 2004 Turrisi was a professor at Boise State and was a PI or Co-PI on grants totaling over $5,000,000 in research funds from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and the American Cancer Society for his work on parenting and adolescent health in the areas of drinking and skin cancer prevention.
In addition, Dr. Turrisi has numerous publications on these and other related topics in Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, Journal of Behavioral Medicine, Cancer, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Journal of Youth and Adolescence, Multivariate Behavioral Research, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Journal of Studies on Alcohol.
Dr. Turrisi has also co-authored two books on advanced multivariate statistical modeling (Interaction Effects in Multiple Regression, 1st and 2nd editions, Sage) and recently contributed toward the development of a National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism informational booklet for parents on how to talk with their adolescent sons and daughter about alcohol.
Dr. Turrisi also serves as a consultant/grant reviewer for the National Institute of Health, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and National Institute on Child Health and Human Development.