Current Research

My research interests focus on child abuse, sexual victimization, HIV risk behaviors, social networks, and dating violence and substance use among both college populations as well as among youth experiencing homelessness. My previous work on a National Institute on Drug Abuse grant examined primary and secondary stressors, their association with substance use, and how secondary stressors and protective social resources co-vary with alcohol and drug use. For this project we used ecological momentary assessment (EMA) via short message service surveying (SMS) with youth experiencing homelessness to collect daily data in addition to survey data. This pilot work set the groundwork for a large R01 grant application (please read below) that was funded August 2022 to develop a just-in-time personal support intervention to prevent high-risk substance use. In terms of college students, we have been examining borderline personality and PTSD and its relationship with dating violence and/or sexual assault.

Current Teaching

I teach the Family Violence special topics course (SOCI 498/898) and Perspectives on Families (SOCI 449/849).

Selected Publications

2023

Tyler, Kimberly A. and Colleen M. Ray. “Risk and Protective Factors for Mental Health Outcomes Among Sexual Minority and Heterosexual College Women and Men.” Journal of American College Health, 71(3): 705-714. Published online November 17, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1080/07448481.2021.1904955

Brownridge, Douglas A. and Kimberly A. Tyler. “Borderline Personality and Dating Violence among College Students: A Path Analysis.” Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment and Trauma, 32(5): 784-802. Published online June 17, 2022. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10926771.2022.2089865?src=&journalCode=wamt20

Tyler, Kimberly A. “Comparison of Sorority and non-Sorority Women: Risks for Different Sexual Assault Types.” Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, 32(3): 340-358. Published online January 23, 2023. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10538712.2023.2170845

2022

Tyler, Kimberly A., and Colleen M. Ray. “The Relationship Between College Student Characteristics and Reporting Sexual Assault Experiences on Two Different Scales.” Violence & Victims, 37(4): 532-546. DOI: 10.1891/VV-2021-0013

*Kunitzer, Meagan L., Kimberly A. Tyler, and Leslie Gordon Simons. “Familial and Individual Risk Markers for Physical and Psychological Dating Violence Perpetration and Victimization among College Students.” Partner Abuse, 13(3): 402-419.

*McGraw, Lora K., Kimberly A. Tyler, and Leslie Gordon Simons. “Risk Factors for Sexual Assault of Heterosexual and Sexual Minority College Women.” Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 37(9-10): NP8032-NP8055. Published online November 28, 2020.  https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0886260520976224

(*indicates graduate student co-author)

Other Information

In August 2022, I was awarded a five-year grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. My project uses a socio-ecological framework to examine linkages between Proximal risk factors, Affect regulation, and Coping behaviors. Specifically, we will identify factors that influence positive vs. negative coping behavior for youth experiencing homelessness (YEH) to develop a just-in-time personal support intervention that is data-driven, relevant to our population, provides individualized support, and can be sustainable outside the research setting.

This study is highly innovative as YEH are a highly mobile group and oftentimes, traditional interventions where youth must come into agencies to receive the intervention do not work for many youths, especially those deemed at highest risk, who are oftentimes, the youth in most need of an intervention. Thus, a mobile app that sends messaging content and service information directly to their phone for a just-in-time intervention is highly innovative and culturally specific to this population. Currently, there is no just-in-time personal support intervention that exists for this group of youth; thus, this project is ground-breaking because it will be the first of its kind to deliver this type of intervention to youth experiencing homelessness. 

I am also George Holmes University Professor of Sociology and Co-Director of the Longitudinal Networks Core for the Rural Drug Addiction Research Center at UNL.