Thomas S. Weisner PhD

Dr. Thomas S. Weisner is Professor of Anthropology in the Departments of Psychiatry (NPI Semel Institute, Center for Culture and Health) and of Anthropology at UCLA. His research and teaching interests are in culture and human development; medical, psychological and cultural studies of families and children at risk; mixed methods; and evidence-informed policy. He is Director of the Center for Culture & Health at UCLA, and the Fieldwork and Qualitative Data Laboratory in the Intellectual & Developmental Disabilities Research Center. The Lab has developed a range of supports for mixed methods, including the software Dedoose and EthnoNotes, and the Ecocultural Family Interview. He is currently collaborating (with Andrew Fuligni and Nancy Gonzalez) on a new study of the daily activities, family responsibilities and obligations, and academic and behavioral outcomes of 425 Mexican-American teens and parents in Los Angeles. He is a co-PI on a qualitative follow-up study of over 200 young adults diagnosed 12 years earlier with ADHD.

He continues to study the impacts of family supports on children and families, based on a longitudinal random-assignment experimental study over 8 years of a successful support program for working-poor parents (with Greg Duncan, Aletha Huston, Hiro Yoshikawa, Bob Granger and others). He has also collaborated in a longitudinal study of families with children with developmental disabilities (with Ron Gallimore, Barbara Keogh). He has done longitudinal field research (through 1992) in Western Kenya and Nairobi, on sibling caretaking of children, and on the long-term consequences of urban migration for children and families, as well as studies of sibling caretaking and school competence among Native Hawaiians (with Ron Gallimore) and Latina youth in California Patricia East.