Lawrence M. Scheier, Ph.D.
Lawrence M. Scheier, Ph.D. is Adjunct
Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Washington University School
of Medicine, St. Louis. Dr. Scheier is also President of LARS Research
Institute, a Nevada-based non-profit company offering a full line of
services in program development, evaluation, technology transfer, and
health promotion especially among youthful populations. Dr. Scheier
received his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California in 1988,
completed an NIAAA postdoctoral fellowship at the Alcohol Research Group,
University of California, Berkeley, and also an NIMH postdoctoral
fellowship in developmental studies at the Polisher Research Institute,
Philadelphia Geriatric Center, Medical College of Pennsylvania. Dr.
Scheier has used his training and methodological expertise to work with a
variety of groups developing longitudinal models of health, drug etiology
and drug consequences and he has published with noted luminaries in the
drug abuse field including Drs. Peter Bentler, Michael Newcomb, Denise
Kandel, Linda Cottler, and Gilbert Botvin.
Dr. Scheier has been a Principal
Investigator on several federally funded grants from the National
Institute on Drug Abuse, specifically emphasizing evaluation of
school-based drug abuse prevention programs, longitudinal studies of
adolescent drug etiology and drug consequences, and more recently studies
of social cognition and identity formation in multiracial youth. His
particular interest rests with studies of cognitive efficacy, mastery, and
control in an effort to determine whether drug use disrupts development
and has deleterious consequences on young adult functioning. Dr. Scheier
is well versed in causal modeling techniques, growth curve analysis, and
multivariate statistical methods for application in developmental health
studies. Dr. Scheier is currently a member of the editorial board of four
prominent drug studies journals including the Journal of Alcohol and Drug
Education, Journal of Drug Education, Journal of Studies on Alcohol, and
Journal of Child and Adolescent Substance Abuse. Dr. Scheier has
participated as a reviewer for NIAAA, NIMH, and NIDA and most recently was
a member of a NIH special emphasis panel emphasizing prevention
methodology (Social Sciences, Nursing, Epidemiology, and Methods
Integrated Review Group [SNEM-1]) and NIDA-K for training and career
research awards.
Epidemiology and Prevention Research Group 
