Barbara Tinsley

Barbara J. Tinsley is a professor in the Division of Social and
Behavioral Sciences in the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and
Sciences and holds affiliate appointments in ASU’s Graduate
College, Department of Psychology, and the School of Social and Family
Dynamics.  She received her Ph.D. in psychology at the University
of Illinois in 1984. She joined the faculty at ASU’s West campus
in 2005 after 15 years at the University of California-Riverside,
where she was a professor of psychology and chair of the
university’s Program of Human Development. Dr. Tinsley’s
research interests are focused on child health socialization in the
context of culture, family-child interaction, adolescent risk
behavior; child obesity in Latinos, HIV/AIDS risk behavior in
adolescence, and pediatrician-parent communication.  For the past
five years, she has been engaged in research on how parents define
supervision of their preschool children in Mexican American and
non-Latino white families, including ethnographic research in
community parks where parents bring their children to play.  In
her laboratory at the West campus, Dr. Tinsley brings together
families with children ages 9-11 to observe parents in conversation
with their children about how to assess risk and stay safe. 
During the past two years, she and her research team have done field
work during the evacuations of families for wildfires in San Diego
(CA), and the recovery of families immediately after severe tornados
in Tennessee. Dr. Tinsley is widely published and is the author of
“How Children Learn to be Healthy” (Cambridge University
Press, 2003).