About:
Relationships.
We work with young people on relationships to prevent violence.
About
Jeff Temple, Ph.D., is a Professor, Licensed Psychologist, and Director of the Center for Violence Prevention at the University of Texas Medical Branch. His research focuses on interpersonal relationships, with a particular focus on adolescent relationship abuse.
Dr. Temple has substantial research and leadership experience. He and his team have secured training grants, cooperative agreements, and major research awards from multiple federal (e.g., CDC, NIH, NIJ), state (e.g., VOCA, CJD), and foundation (e.g., Hogg, Caruth, Moody) agencies. All of his funding relates to the etiology, course, consequences, and prevention of violence. In addition to publishing more than 120 peer-reviewed papers (the vast majority of which are on violence), he is among the world’s highest cited violence researchers and has a seat at the table for violence prevention discussions at the national and global level.
Dr. Temple and his team have secured training grants, cooperative agreements, and major research awards from multiple federal, state, and foundation agencies. All of his funding relates to the etiology, course, consequences, and prevention of violence.
In addition to publishing more than 140 peer-reviewed papers, he is among the world’s highest cited violence researchers and has a seat at the table for violence prevention discussions at the state, national, and global level.
Dr. Temple and his team have worked with over 100 schools throughout Texas to provide healthy relationship and violence prevention curriculum to administrators, teachers, and students.
Dr. Jeff Temple (top right corner) at Texas Governor Abbott’s roundtable following the Santa Fe High School shooting.
I lead a multi-disciplinary team of social science and humanities researchers as well as public and mental health professionals dedicated to conducting funded research on the behavioral, psychosocial, and structural aspects of adolescent and women’s health across the lifespan; providing comprehensive and integrative psychological services to adolescents, women, couples, and families; training the next generation of health care professionals in incorporating evidenced-based psychological principles in translational research and patient care; and developing and implementing evidence-based prevention programs, particularly those that promote healthy relationships and decrease violence.
The purpose of this ongoing, 15-year NIH- and NIJ- funded Dating it Safe study is to examine the longitudinal risk and protective factors of dating violence (or adolescent relationship abuse). A sample of 1,042 high school students were recruited from seven public high schools and assessed as freshman/sophomore high school students in 2010 and have been assessed annually.
The primary aims of this CDC-funded implementation study are to assess initial feasibility, quality, acceptability, engagement, adaptation, and satisfaction with the relationship curriculum Fourth R; examine school-, teacher-, and student-level barriers to high-fidelity implementation and correlates of low fidelity to the intervention protocol; determine sustainability and impact of experience on implementation by assessing changes over the course of the study in fidelity, feasibility, acceptability, satisfaction, and engagement, and; evaluate effects of initial implementation fidelity and change over time on students' changes in attitudes, knowledge, skills, intentions, and behavior related to teen dating violence.
The NIH-funded school-based cluster randomized trial of the 7th-grade version of Fourth R (reading, w(r)iting, a(r)ithmetic, and relationships) includes 24 ethnically diverse middle schools (ie, clusters: 12 intervention schools, 12 control schools) in area schools to determine the impact of the program by comparing students in intervention schools with those in control schools.
The purpose of this CDC-funded project is to implement effective healthy relationship programs in Houston area high schools situated in high crime/violence areas. The evaluation component will focus on monitoring both the implementation (fidelity, adaptation) and outcomes of the relationship program Fourth R and Healthy Relationships Plus Program (HRPP), and will utilize school-based youth risk assessments, observations, and student and teacher surveys.
With funding from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, Dr. Temple and his colleagues are Integrating and analyzing data from multiple intervention trials to understand the best approach to preventing unsafe sex and teen pregnancy.