Jane Dixon

Jane Dixon, Ph.D., is an experienced investigator, who has taught research method and conducted research at Yale University School of Nursing since 1975. Her research has focused on behavioral factors in promotion of health, and management of illness, across various populations and settings. She has been principal investigator of three major grants funded by the National Institutes of Health, and has been co-investigator on numerous others. Funding sources have included National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Institute of Nursing Research, National Institute of Aging, National Cancer Institute, National Library of Medicine, Agency for Health Care Research and Quality, and Health Resources and Services Administration.

Dr. Dixon's current substantive focus is in the area of environment health, especially engagement of people in promoting healthy environment - i.e., people's concerns about environmental hazards which may affect health, and the responses to those hazards by those who are most affected. With colleagues, Dr. Dixon developed an instrument to measure people's engagement in environmental health. A foundation for this work is the formulation of an integrated model that identifies four domains of knowledge for environmental health. This integrated model is intended to unify biological and behavioral factors in environmental health research. Using this model, she has recently completed a study about community responses to particulate matter air pollution in New Haven. Dr. Dixon has also authored or co-authored several articles focused on specific environmental health issues – often in collaboration with students engaged in their praxis work. Topics have included effects of air pollution and pesticide exposure on pregnancy course and/or outcomes, and the role of the school nurse in a radiation emergency during school hours. It is an honor to collaborate in these projects initiated by students.

Dr. Dixon also has numerous involvements in research efforts to develop new measures which are psychometrically sound. She served as site principal investigator (Yale) of a study to develop an instrument to measure self-management of adolescents with type 1 diabetes – with focus on the transition from family management by parents of young adolescents to growing independence of self-management in older adolescents. She also collaborated in development of Family Management Measure, an instrument to measure family management of childhood chronic illness. Dr. Dixon also utilizes her expertise in instrument development to collaborate in projects on other diverse topics, including implementability of clinical practice guidelines, attitudes regarding privacy and confidentiality of health care information, integration of chronic illness, barriers to mediation practice, and knowledge about care options among the seriously ill, and she has created instruments to assess experience of illness over the lifespan, self-ratings of health, and career-life balance for application in health psychology studies. She has worked with international colleagues to develop and refine approaches for translating instruments from one language to another, and to assess validity of translated instruments. Drawing on these diverse measurement projects which have often involved use of complex statistical techniques such as factor analysis, Dr. Dixon has written the chapter on exploratory factor analysis through six editions of a widely used statistics textbook.

Dr. Dixon served as a member, then as Chair, of the Human Subjects Research Review Committee at Yale School of Nursing for 17 years. She is now a member of the Yale University Faculty of Arts and Science Human Subjects Committee. As a professor, Dr. Dixon primarily teaches courses in research methods and measurement to PhD students in nursing, and she mentors PhD students, especially in relation to methods and measurement. She also teaches a course on evaluation in the NMPL specialty. Dr. Dixon was honored to be selected by students to receive the Annie Goodrich Award for Excellence in Teaching at Yale University School of Nursing, in 2006. She feels privileged to have this opportunity to teach and collaborate with nurses of Yale, and to support the YSN mission of "better health for all people."