Krista W Ranby,
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Research Summary: Krista Ranby joined the Center in August 2009. She received a Ph.D. in psychology from Arizona State University, where her areas of specialization were social and quantitative psychology. Ranby is interested in understanding why some people engage in health protective behaviors while others do not. Further, she is interested in how social scientists can influence people to make healthy choices. Ranby has worked on developing models of health behavior, in translating models into interventions to understand the mechanisms through which interventions modify behavior, and in improving the measurement of constructs that may predict health behavior. She is especially interested in understanding the social influences that may promote or discourage health behavior. In her dissertation, Ranby expanded on current models of health behavior to include multiple types of social influence. She tested this model through an examination of the effect of social influences from a significant other (i.e. husband) on the exercise behaviors in a community-residing cohort of adult married women.