Ty A. Ridenour

Ty A. Ridenour has two decades of clinical and research experience in etiology, assessment, and methodology related to disruptive behavior disorders, with the penultimate goal of improving prevention of these outcomes.  His areas of interest and contributions focus on developmental progressions in the behaviors and their risk factors, developing tools to facilitate translation of science into practice (prevention), and ages 8 to 13. 

A second concentration of his funded research is to develop methodologies to conduct rigorous analysis of longitudinal, within-person clinical trials using small samples.  His recent studies have demonstrated and highlighted the relative strengths and weaknesses of analytic techniques for detecting change within individuals over time, including trajectory analysis and state space modeling.  One objective of this work is to create tools and adapt data analytic techniques and other methodologies for practitioner uses for evidence-based, individualized treatment.

Before joining RTI, Dr. Ridenour was a faculty member of the Center for Education and Drug Abuse Research at the University of Pittsburgh, the Prevention Research Center at The Pennsylvania State University, and the Department of Psychiatry of Washington University in St. Louis. Since 1996, his continuous National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding has been to develop instrumentation for, and to investigate etiology of, pre-disorder substance use, particularly before and during adolescence. This work has required innovative instrumentation (for developmental appropriateness), integration of distinct theoretical orientations, and collaboration with multidisciplinary teams.

Dr. Ridenour has authored and co-authored more than 70 peer-reviewed journal articles on these and related research topics.