A defensive mindset: A pattern of social information processing that develops early and predicts life course outcomes.

Kenneth A. Dodge is the William McDougall Distinguished Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University. He is also the founding and past director of the Center for Child and Family Policy, as well as the founder of Family Connects International. 

Dodge is a leading scholar in the development and prevention of aggressive and violent behaviors. His work provides a model for understanding how some young children grow up to engage in aggression and violence and provides a framework for intervening early to prevent the costly consequences of violence for children and their communities.

Dodge joined the faculty of the Sanford School of Public Policy in September 1998. He is trained as a clinical and developmental psychologist, having earned his B.A. in psychology at Northwestern University in 1975 and his Ph.D. in psychology at Duke University in 1978. Prior to joining Duke, Dodge served on the faculty at Indiana University, the University of Colorado, and Vanderbilt University.

Dodge's research has resulted in the Family Connects Program, an evidence-based, population health approach to supporting families of newborn infants. Piloted in Durham, NC, and formerly known as Durham Connects, the program attempts to reach all families giving birth in a community to assess family needs, intervene where needed, and connect families to tailored community resources. Randomized trials indicate the program's success in improving family connections to the community, reducing maternal depression and anxiety, and preventing child abuse. The model is currently expanding to many communities across the U.S.

Dodge has published more than 500 scientific articles which have been cited more than 120,000 times.

Elected into the National Academy of Medicine in 2015, Dodge has received many honors and awards, including the following:

• President (Elected), Society for Research in Child Development
• Fellow, Society for Prevention Research
• Distinguished Scientist, Child Mind Institute
• Research Scientist Award from the National Institutes of Health
• Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution from the American Psychological Association
• J.P. Scott Award for Lifetime Contribution to Aggression Research from the International Society for Research on Aggression
• Science to Practice Award from the Society for Prevention Research
• Inaugural recipient of the “Public Service Matters” Award from the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs and Administration
• Inaugural recipient of the Presidential Citation Award for Excellence in Research from the Society for Research on Adolescence

Jennifer Godwin is a research scientist at the Center for Child and Family Policy. She joined the Center in 2003 to provide statistical expertise for various projects. Currently, she works on the Fast Track and Childhood Risk Factors and Young Adult Competence projects, providing statistical analyses. She has extensive programming experience in SAS, Stata and MPlus, including survival analysis, mediation models, and multilevel models for continuous and categorical dependent variables.

Jennifer Lansford is the director of the Center for Child and Family Policy and S. Malcolm Gillis Distinguished Research Professor of Public Policy in the Sanford School of Public Policy.

Dr. Lansford's research focuses on the development of aggression and other behavior problems in youth, with an emphasis on how family and peer contexts contribute to or protect against these outcomes. She examines how experiences with parents (e.g., physical abuse, discipline, divorce) and peers (e.g., rejection, friendships) affect the development of children's behavior problems, how influence operates in adolescent peer groups, and how cultural contexts moderate links between parenting and children's adjustment.