Kirk von Sternberg, Ph.D., is a professor at the Steve Hicks School of Social Work, and the associate director of the Health Behavior Research and Training Institute (HBRT). von Sternberg has a master’s degree in social work from the University of Houston and a Ph.D. in behavioral science from The University of Texas Health Science Center Houston-School of Public Health. von Sternberg has 25+ years of experience in designing and implementing large clinical trials to test interventions based on the Transtheoretical Model and Motivational Interviewing (MI). As an investigator, he has taken the lead on study design and data analysis on several large NIH- and CDC-funded randomized controlled intervention trials addressing risk of alcohol-exposed pregnancies, alcohol, and safer sexual practices, STI screening, cocaine abuse, and screening and brief interventions for alcohol and drugs in medical settings to name a few. He is currently principal investigator on a NIDA-funded trial to test the CHOICES intervention to prevent substance-exposed pregnancy in adolescent women on probation in Harris County. Along with the current intervention trial, CHOICES TEEN, von Sternberg has particular interest in studying the mechanisms of change of efficacious interventions using profile analyses, and moderation and mediation analysis. He is currently involved in psychometric analyses of process of change assessments to develop briefer measures for use in a computer adaptive testing format (CAT).
