Scott Novak

Expertise

Statistical Methodology
Psychiatric and Substance Use Disorder Research
Epidemiological Study Design

Biography

Scott Novak, PhD, is a developmental epidemiologist in RTI's behavioral health epidemiology program. His research interests lie primarily in the causes, correlates, and consequences of psychiatric disorders, including the behavioral and psychiatric sequelae. Dr. Novak is trained in novel analytic and methodological approaches to the analysis of epidemiological and clinical data, including latent class models and propensity models of causal risk factors. He is developing and applying statistical approaches to the study of drug-related outcomes using hierarchical linear models (HLMs) and structural equation models with latent variables. Dr. Novak is currently the principal investigator on several NIH grants to examine substance use and psychiatric trajectories over the lifecourse. Prior to coming to RTI in 2004, he was on the faculty of Brown University in the Department of Community Health, and was a Robert Wood Johnson Faculty Fellow in the Department of Health Care Policy/Maternal and Child Health at Harvard University.

Education

PhD, Quantitative Sociology, University of Kentucky at Lexington; MA, Medical Sociology, University of Kentucky at Lexington; BS, Statistics, University of Wisconsin at Madison; BA, Sociology, University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Selected Publications

Novak, S.P., Reardon, S.F., Raudenbush, S.W., & Buka, S.L. (2006 Apr). Retail tobacco outlet density and youth cigarette smoking: a propensity-modeling approach. American Journal of Public Health, 96 (4):670-676.

Borrelli, B., Novak, S., Hecht, J., Emmons, K., Papandonatos, G., & Abrams, D. (Nov-Dec 2005). Home health care nurses as a new channel for smoking cessation treatment: outcomes from project CARES (Community-nurse Assisted Research and Education on Smoking). Preventive Medicine, 41 (5):815-821.

Wright, D., Bobashev, G.V., & Novak, S.P. (2005 May). Decomposing the total variation in a nested random effects model of neighborhood, household, and individual components when the dependent variable is dichotomous: implications for adolescent marijuana use. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 78 (2):195-204.

Slomkowski, C., Rende, R., Novak, S., Lloyd-Richardson, E., & Niaura, R. (April 2005). Sibling effects on smoking in adolescence: evidence for social influence from a genetically informative design. Addiction, 100 (4):430-438.

Breslau, N., Novak, S.P., & Kessler, R.C. (2004). Daily smoking and the subsequent onset of psychiatric disorders. Psychological Medicine, 34 (2):323-333.

Breslau, N., Novak, S.P., & Kessler, R.C. (2004 Jan 1). Psychiatric disorders and stages of smoking. Biological Psychiatry, 55 (1):69-76.

Novak, S.P., Reardon, S.F., & Buka, S.L. (2002). How beliefs about substance use differ by socio-demographic characteristics, individual experiences, and neighborhood environments among urban adolescents.. Journal of Drug Education, 32 (4):319-342.

Novak, S.P., & Clayton, R.R. (May 2001). The influence of school environment and self-regulation on transitions between stages of cigarette smoking: a multilevel analysis. Health Psychology, 20 (3):196-207.

Lynam, D.R., Caspi, A., Moffitt, T.E., Wikstrom, P.O., Loeber, R., & Novak, S. (Nov 2000). The interaction between impulsivity and neighborhood context on offending: The effects of impulsivity are stronger in poorer neighborhoods. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 109 (4):563-574.

Lynam, D.R., Milich, R., Zimmerman, R., Novak, S.P., Logan, T.K., Martin, C., Leukefeld, C., & Clayton, R. (August 1999). Project DARE: no effects at 10-year follow-up. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 67 (4):590-593.

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