Linda Collins

Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences

Professional overview

Linda M. Collins is Professor of Global Public Health in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, with a secondary appointment in the Department of Biostatistics. She earned her B.A. in Psychology at the University of Connecticut and her Ph.D. in Quantitative Psychology at the University of Southern California.

Collins’ research interests are focused on the development, dissemination, and application of the multiphase optimization strategy (MOST), a framework for the optimization of behavioral, biobehavioral, and social-structural interventions. The objective of MOST is to improve intervention effectiveness, efficiency, economy, and scalability. She is currently collaborating on research applying MOST in the areas of smoking cessation, the prevention of excessive drinking and risky sex in college students, and HIV services.

Collins’ research has been funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and the National Science Foundation, among others. She has given more than 150 presentations on MOST around the world, and her publications have appeared in journals in the fields of behavioral science, quantitative methodology, medicine, and engineering.

Collins has held tenured faculty positions at the University of Southern California and at Penn State University, where she was Distinguished Professor of Human Development and Family Studies and Director of The Methodology Center. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, the Society of Behavioral Medicine, and is a past president of the Society of Multivariate Experimental Psychology and the Society for Prevention Research.

Education

BA, Psychology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT

PhD, Quantitative Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA

Honors and awards

Fulbright Specialist, National University of Ireland Galway (2018)

Pauline Schmitt Russell Distinguished Career Award, Pennsylvania State University’s College of Health and Human Development (2017)

Evan G. and Helen G. Pattishall Outstanding Research Achievement Award, Pennsylvania State University’s College of Health and Human Development (2011)

President’s Award, Society for Prevention Research (2004)

Faculty Scholar Medal for the Social and Behavioral Sciences, Pennsylvania State University (2000)

Psychology Department Teacher of the Year, University of Southern California (1992)

Psychology Department Mentorship Award, University of Southern California (1991)

Society of Multivariate Experimental Psychology Award for Distinguished Early Career Contributions to Multivariate Behavioral Research (1991)

Areas of research and study

Behavioral Science

Cost Effectiveness

Cost-effective Health Programs and Policies

Dissemination and Implementation of Evidence-based Programs

Publications

Publications

Customizing treatment to the patient: Adaptive treatment strategies

Patterns of substance use onset among Hispanics in Puerto Rico and the United States

PROC LCA: A SAS procedure for latent class analysis

Research Design and Methods

The Multiphase Optimization Strategy (MOST) and the Sequential Multiple Assignment Randomized Trial (SMART). New Methods for More Potent eHealth Interventions

Using engineering control principles to inform the design of adaptive interventions: A conceptual introduction

A mixture model of discontinuous development in heavy drinking from ages 18 to 30: The role of college enrollment

A multidimensional developmental model of alcohol use during emerging adulthood

Analysis of longitudinal data: The integration of theoretical model, temporal design, and statistical model

Methodological Considerations in Prevention Research

The proximal association between smoking and alcohol use among first year college students

A strategy for optimizing and evaluating behavioral interventions

Historical review of school-based randomized trials for evaluating problem behavior prevention programs

Using data augmentation to obtain standard errors and conduct hypothesis tests in latent class and latent transition analysis

A conceptual framework for adaptive preventive interventions

Analyzing the acquisition of drug self-administration using growth curve models

Using growth models to relate acquisition of nicotine self-administration to break point and nicotinic receptor binding

Adaptive sampling in research on risk-related behaviors

Measurement and design issues in tobacco and drug use research

Pubertal timing and the onset of substance use in females during early adolescence

The effect of the timing and spacing of observations in longitudinal studies of tobacco and other drug use: Temporal design considerations

A comparison of inclusive and restrictive strategies in modern missing data procedures

Developmental pathways to alcohol abuse and dependence in young adulthood

An alternative framework for defining mediation

Is reliability obsolete? A commentary on "are simple gain scores obsolete?"