Faculty: Bachelor of Science in Substance Abuse Counseling

George Richardson, PhD, is Professor of Counseling and Coordinator for the Substance Abuse Counseling Program in the College of Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services at the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Richardson is an interdisciplinary researcher focused on evaluating the validity of theoretical constructs, developmental theories, and scores derived from psychosocial measures. His research program has four overlapping strands. With support from the National Institute for Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (R21AA029762), the first strand attends to substance use disorder and recovery, developing and evaluating etiological theories and related measures, with an increasing focus on alcohol use. The second strand is comprised of evaluations of evolutionary-developmental theories of individual differences in high-risk traits and behaviors such as substance use. The third focuses on reducing bias in measures used to assess diverse groups by (a) directly identifying and addressing bias in certain instruments, and (b) refining and promoting the uptake of the methods for identifying item biases. The fourth uses twin and family designs to conduct tests of developmental theories using controls for unobserved familial confounds.