Dr. Jensen is a Research Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work, the Associate Director for Research in the Collaborative for Implementation Practice, and a Family Research and Engagement Specialist in the Jordan Institute for Families at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Jensen’s scholarship focuses on promoting family well-being in diverse contexts; strengthening family-serving systems; and centering equity in family research, practice, and policy. Specifically, Dr. Jensen’s work attends to families experiencing relationship transitions and shifts in parental structure; family maltreatment prevention among military-connected families; promoting the use of data and evidence in family-serving systems; understanding the role of trusting relationships in optimizing the uptake of effective programs and practices in family-serving systems; advocating for inclusive definitions of family; and centering equity in the theory and methods used to study and support families.
Dr. Jensen’s professional activities are connected to more than 5.2 million dollars in extramural funding, including support from the National Institutes of Health, The Duke Endowment, the William T. Grant Foundation, The Annie E. Casey Foundation, and the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Jensen is co-founder and co-chair of the Diverse Family Structures Focus Group of the National Council on Family Relations, which has amassed over 130 scholars across the country and globe aiming to align research, practice, and policy with the complex realities of family relationships. He is also the leader of the Family Measurement Node and Steering Committee Member of the Life Course Intervention Research Network. As an award-winning educator, Dr. Jensen specializes in delivering graduate-level content related to family dynamics, child development, program evaluation, and advanced quantitative methodology.
Degrees and Licenses
Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
MSW, Brigham Young University
BS, Brigham Young University
Primary Program
Jordan Institute for Families
Certifications
Safe Zone
Haven
Research and Professional Interests
Social Work with Families
Promoting Child and Family Well-Being in Diverse Contexts
Strengthening Family-Serving Systems
Centering Equity in Family Research, Practice, and Policy
Quantitative Methods
Principal Investigator
Building Trusting Relationships to Support Evidence Use in Human Services: Can We Build the Skills of Implementation Stakeholders to Foster Trust?
Family Maltreatment Prevention in the United States Air Force
Co-Investigator
Evaluation of the Get Ready Guilford Initiative (GRGI)
Leveraging Ecological Momentary Assessment to Identify Patterns and Predictors of Emotional Wellbeing in Adolescents
Other Projects
Intensive Longitudinal Data Analysis of Adolescent Stress Processes
Recent Publications
Jensen, T., Bowen, G., & King, E. (2022). Associations between family maltreatment perpetration and latent profiles of personal and family strengths among active-duty Air Force members. Journal of Family Violence, 37, 407-421.
Ramaswami, S., Jensen, T., Berghaus, M., De-Oliveira, S., Russ, S., Weiss-Laxer, N., Verbiest, S., & Barkin, S. (2022). Family health development in life course research: A scoping review of family functioning measures. Pediatrics, 149(Supplement 5), e2021053509J.
Metz, A., Jensen, T., Farley, A., & Boaz, A. (2022). Is implementation research out of step with implementation practice? Pathways to effective implementation support over the last decade. Implementation Research and Practice. Advance online publication.
Jensen, T. (2022). Stepparent-child relationships and child outcomes: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Family Nursing. Advance online publication.
Jensen, T., & Sanner, C. (2021). A scoping review of research on well-being across diverse family structures: Rethinking approaches to understanding contemporary families. Journal of Family Theory & Review, 13(4), 463-495.
Jensen, T., Duke, N., Hotz. V. J., Harris, K., & Perreira, K. (2021). Like parent, like child: Intergenerational patterns of cardiovascular risk factors at midlife. Journal of Adolescent Health, 68, 596-603.
Presentations, Workshops and Media
Statistical Methods for Modeling Change Over Time - Society for Social Work and Research Annual Conference
Latent Class Analysis: Key Concepts and Application - Statistical Methods Workshop in the School of Law, Psychology and Social Work at Örebro University, Sweden
Introduction to Multiple Regression - Quantitative Methods Webinar Series, National Council on Family Relations
When Less Really Is More: Putting Data Visualization Best Practices to Work - Invited Presentation, The Annie E. Casey Foundation
The Stepparent’s Dilemma — The Atlantic
Tighten your family’s ties during the holidays - The Well, UNC-Chapel Hill
Courses
SOWO 916
Structural Equation Modeling
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Spring
Ph.D.
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SOWO 917
Longitudinal and Multilevel Analysis
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Fall
Ph.D.
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SOWO 810
Evaluation of Social Work Interventions
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Spring
MSW
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