Research Interests
I have just begun my third year in the Penn State Human Development and Family Studies doctorate program and am very excited about this upcoming year. My research focus is primarily on promoting adolescent ownership (i.e. agency) of personal development. More specifically, I am interested in understanding the motivational, cognitive, and behavioral domains of this sense of ownership. My master's thesis is on the development and validation of a 15-item global measure of adolescent agency.
Academic Activities
This semester marks my first semester as a Prevention and Methodology Training (PAMT) fellow. I'm quite excited about the PAMT fellowship and growing as a researcher in both the prevention and methodology fields. I look forward to gaining and refining skills in person-specific methods (i.e. Latent Class Analysis) and in methods that examine intra-individual variability.This fellowship offers truly amazing opportunities to collaborate with faculty, gain a deeper understanding of grant mechanisms, and meet with the NIH people.
I am currently working on a paper with Ed Smith that examines the prevalence of sexual pressure behaviors in South African male youth, and the effects of the HealthWise South Africa intervention on this behavior. In collaboration with current and former lab members, we plan to hold a paper symposium at the annual SPR conference in May 2010 on risk and delinquency behaviors in the sample of youth in our study.
This year I will be serving as a Diversity Representative on the Graduate Student Steering Committee, along with Brian Stiehler. We're looking forward to expanding the diversity role on the committee and engaging with the Office of Graduate Equity within the Health and Human Development department. We hope to have a productive, progressive, and fun year.
I have just begun my third year in the Penn State Human Development and Family Studies doctorate program and am very excited about this upcoming year. My research focus is primarily on promoting adolescent ownership (i.e. agency) of personal development. More specifically, I am interested in understanding the motivational, cognitive, and behavioral domains of this sense of ownership. My master's thesis is on the development and validation of a 15-item global measure of adolescent agency.
Academic Activities
This semester marks my first semester as a Prevention and Methodology Training (PAMT) fellow. I'm quite excited about the PAMT fellowship and growing as a researcher in both the prevention and methodology fields. I look forward to gaining and refining skills in person-specific methods (i.e. Latent Class Analysis) and in methods that examine intra-individual variability.This fellowship offers truly amazing opportunities to collaborate with faculty, gain a deeper understanding of grant mechanisms, and meet with the NIH people.
I am currently working on a paper with Ed Smith that examines the prevalence of sexual pressure behaviors in South African male youth, and the effects of the HealthWise South Africa intervention on this behavior. In collaboration with current and former lab members, we plan to hold a paper symposium at the annual SPR conference in May 2010 on risk and delinquency behaviors in the sample of youth in our study.
This year I will be serving as a Diversity Representative on the Graduate Student Steering Committee, along with Brian Stiehler. We're looking forward to expanding the diversity role on the committee and engaging with the Office of Graduate Equity within the Health and Human Development department. We hope to have a productive, progressive, and fun year.