Margit Wiesner

Margit Wiesner is an Associate Professor in the School of Psychological, Health, and Learning Sciences at the University of Houston. Her research focuses on developmental trajectories of problem behaviors (e.g., juvenile offending, substance use), youth violent victimization, and vocational career pathways. She also examines mental health measurement invariance and scientific computing methodologies. Her work integrates multi-wave longitudinal data from the U.S. and Germany.

Research Interests:

• Primary: Juvenile offending trajectories, depressive symptoms, substance use, health-risking behaviors
• Secondary: Youth violence outcomes, vocational pathways, mental health screening validation

Her recent studies emphasize validation of eating disorder surveys (e.g., M-KEDS) for Hispanic adolescents and bidirectional mental health-crime relationships in at-risk populations. Methodological innovations in criminal trajectory modeling and policy implications are recurring themes in her work.

Key Contributions:

• Developmental criminology frameworks
• Cultural adaptation of psychological scales (e.g., Utrecht-Management of Identity Commitments Scale)
• Intergenerational crime transmission factors