Research in Family Studies and Human Development is conducted in 5 core areas. These targeted areas constitute our core domains for development of focused excellence in basic and applied research on families and human development.
1. Adolescent Development and Transition to Adulthood
Research in this area examines the influence of socio-cultural contexts, participation in youth programs, and famiy relationships on adolescent health and development.
Sherry Betts: Dr. Betts works with a team of research scientists, research specialists, Extension Agents, and community groups to conduct Teen Opinion Poll-Arizona (TOP-AZ). This survey allows us to listen to the youth voice regarding their behaviors; values; perceptions of families, friends, schools, and communities; their aspirations; and other characteristics. These data are then examined in the context of international, national, state and local circumstances and trends to respond to adolescent needs and build on strengths through local program development, implementation and evaluation.
Lynne Borden: Dr. Borden's research focuses on youth development. Specifically, she investigates the influence of families on the participation of young people in youth development programs, and how this participation in turn affects important life outcomes. She has studied, in particular, the influence of program participation on educational attainment, civic participation, and successful transition to adulthood.
Noel Card: Dr. Card studies the antecedents and consequences of adolescent aggression and peer relations. His research incorporates multiple contextual levels of influence, including individual characteristics, parenting and family features, interconnections among various aspects of peer relations, and broader contextual factors (e.g., school transitions). His current research focuses on the role of dyadic interactions and relationships; specifically, on interrelations among friendships, enemies, and aggressor-victim relationships. Methods of measuring and modeling the multiple features, both concurrently and over time, are also a focus of Dr. Card's research.
Bruce Ellis: Dr. Ellis conducts longitudinal studies examing the effects of paternal investment and quality of family relationships on timing of puberty, adolescent sexual behavior, and risk of teenage pregnancy. He is particularly interested in applications of life history theory to adolescent development.
Susan Silverberg Koerner: With a history of research on adolescents and their parents (e.g., the development of autonomy), Dr. Koerner recently completed a longitudinal study based on structural family systems concepts, focusing primarily on mother-adolescent relationships in the first two years after divorce. Of special interest were the extent, meaning, and mental-behavioral health implications of mother-to-adolescent disclosure about sensitive topic areas in the wake of divorce (e.g., financial concerns, anger felt toward the adolescent's father/the ex-husband).
Michael Rohrbaugh: Dr. Rohrbaugh coordinates a multi-site observational study examining links between adolescent drug abuse and family interaction, including how these links may vary with culture and change over time.
Stephen T. Russell: Dr. Russell studies contexts of development and their influence on adolescent sexuality and health, with specific focus on the role of ethnic and sexual identity in adolescent health and well-being. A large portion of his work focuses on adolescent sexual orientation, with the objective of better understanding risk and resilience among sexual minority youth. He also is involved in a multi-year study of ethnic group differences in parenting practices and the implications for adolescent health.
Mari Wilhelm: As Director of the Institute for Children, Youth and Families (ICYF), Dr. Wilhelm established an Evaluation Core in which she and others conduct research to determine the effectiveness of programs that promote adolescent development. These programs emphasize academic success and the development of health and resilience. For more information please refer to the ERAD web site at http://erad.arizona.edu.
2. Family Relationships and Health/Well-being
Research in this area focuses on the emotional well-being and physical health of family members across the lifecycle. Emphasis is on relationship processes and family context as important factors contributing to overall health and well-being.
Emily Butler: Dr. Butler's research focuses on emotional processes and self-regulation in the context of close relationships. Using a multi-method approach, she investigates the physiological, psychological, and social aspects of emotional interactions in couples and families. A current focus of her research is to study emotions, self-regulation, and eating in couples and families coping with obesity.
Melissa Curran: Dr. Curran studies how early representations within the family of origin impact current and later marital, child, and familial outcomes. She uses multiple methods (interview, observation, self-report) and multiple informants (husband, wife, child) in her research.
Susan Silverberg Koerner: Dr. Koerner's most recent research endeavors focus on the emotional and physical well-being of adults who are caregivers for elder dependent family members. Based on a daily assessment technique and hierarchical linear modeling, Dr. Koerner is investigating how the day-to-day variations in the caregiving experience (e.g., responsibilities, stressors) are linked to fluctuations in the emotional and physical well-being of caregivers.
Michael Rohrbaugh: In studies of couples coping with heart disease, Dr. Rohrbaugh is examining how relationship processes contribute to the partners' distress and the course of the patient's illness. A related treatment-development study focuses on high-risk couples in which at least one partner continues to smoke despite having heart or lung disease.
Stephen T. Russell: Dr. Russell studies the family as a crucial context for understanding adolescent development and health, with specific focus on the role of ethnic and sexual identity in adolescent health and well-being. A portion of this work focuses on the family lives of sexual minority youth. He also is involved in a multi-year study of ethnic group differences in parenting practices and the implications for adolescent health.
Mari Wilhelm: Dr. Wilhelm's research focuses on the emotional well-being of women during pregnancy and early parenthood. She has a joint appointment in the College of Public Health and also serves as Co-Chair for the Research Core of the UA National Center of Excellence in Women's Health.
3. Social and Emotional Development In Early Childhood
Research in this area focuses on psychobiologic and socio-emotional development in young children and examines the roles of early familial and extra-familial experiences and socio-cultural influences in that development.
Noel Card: Dr. Card studies the peer relations and aggressive behaviors, including their antecedents and consequences. His research has considers friendships and antipathetic relationships, and how these relationships with peers connect with relationships within the family (e.g., parent-child attachment). He has also examined the various forms and functions of aggressive behavior, considering the risk factors and consequences for both the aggressors and victims; his current research considers the dyadic contexts in which these various types of aggression occur (i.e., aggressor-victim relationships). Methods of quantitatively modeling these phenomena across time are of central concern in Dr. Card's research.
Melissa Curran: Dr. Curran is interested in how early parental and triadic experiences predict children ' s current and later socioemotional functioning (e.g., ADHD, anxiety, depression).
Bruce Ellis: Dr. Ellis studies the role of early experience in the development of psychobiologic reactivity to stress in young children. His work conceptualizes psychobiologic reactivity as a marker of suseptibility to environmental influence that often moderates the influence of early experience on subsequent developmental outcomes.
Wendy Gamble: Dr. Gamble's research interests focus on the socio-emotional development of children. Current projects include exploring the development of emotional competence among young children and how family emotional climates shape these emerging competencies. Key components of the family examined in this project include the overall emotional climate of the family, parent-child and sibling relations. Developing emotional competence, including understanding emotions and knowing when and how to regulate them, is considered a central task of early childhood with implications for well-being, social adjustment and school readiness. Dr. Gamble's research projects are designed to better understand these linkages.
Angela Taylor: Dr. Taylor's research examines the influence of children's interpersonal relationships (parents, teachers, peers) on socio-emotional development and school adjustment, including the role of these relationships as risk and protective factors. She has particular interest in the socio-cultural determinants of early school adjustment in low-income and ethnic minority children.
Mari Wilhelm: Dr. Wilhelm is a member of the Early Child Development and Learning Initiative. This initiative is a collaborative effort among the Division of Family Studies and Human Development, and the College of Education in the development of an academic program of instruction and research.
4. Romantic and Sexual Relationships
This research area addresses the dynamics of romantic and sexual relationships and assumes that these relationships are best understood from multiple perspectives, i.e., individual development, relational development, gender, and others. Faculty research has focused on relationships from adolescence to adulthood, the interplay of romantic and sexual aspects of relationships, gender dynamics, relationship dysfunctions, and the role of personality in relationships.
Emily Butler: Dr. Butler studies the roles of emotion regulation and social support in the relationships of romantic and married couples. This research includes both laboratory based investigations of couples' supportive interactions and arguments, during which self-report, physiological, and behavioral measures are collected, and daily diary methods in which partners report on their everyday intimate interactions. A recent focus of Dr. Butler's research is to investigate emotion regulation and social support in couples coping with obesity.
Melissa Curran: Dr. Curran studies how early representations within the family of origin impact current and later marital quality and health. Her proposed research includes studying couples in which the wife has breast cancer. She wants to explore the process by which representations of the parents ' marriage predict how supportive spouses are to one another during discussion tasks, and how such support predicts health and well-being in both partners over time.
Bruce Ellis: Dr. Ellis studies the role of social exclusion and self-esteem in regulating investment and aspiration levels in close relationships. He also conducts research on the role of personality in intersexual displays.
Carl Ridley: Dr. Ridley studies the role of sexuality in close relationships. The focus of his research has been on day-to-day transmission between partners in relational emotions, sexual desire, and sexual behavior. The transmission process has been studied with heterosexual dating and married couples and couples in like-sex relationships. Domestically violent couples have been studied with a focus on conflict processes.
Stephen T. Russell: A significant focus of Dr. Russell's work has been on adolescent sexuality and romance. His work in these areas focuses on: Applied research projects on teenage pregnancy prevention, studies of same-sex romance and sexuality in adolescence, and implications of romance and sexuality for well-being, and theoretical and empirical bases for conceptualizing positive sexuality development among adolescents.
5. Applied Research
This research area bridges research and theory development with practice. It is designed to solve practical problems and offer research-based solutions to critical questions. A primary goal of the applied researcher is to improve the human condition.
Sherry Betts: Dr. Betts and a team of research scientists and specialists, Extension Agents and community representatives work together in several Arizona communities to link research with educational programs to learn more about the prevention of dating violence in minority communities. This includes partnering with local schools, adapting a curriculum to be culturally relevant, collecting data in appropriate ways and working with the communities to learn together. Dr. Betts is also engaged in a two national projects, one designed to promote youth development strategies for health and education providers and the other designed to build the capacity of Cooperative Extension to evaluate programs for children, youth and families. Most recently, Dr. Betts has embarked on international projects focused on youth in the community sector.
Lynne Borden: Dr. Borden's research focuses on youth development, specifically on community programs that promote the positive development of young people. She has a particular interest in the factors (e.g., gender, culture, family, peers, program quality, program availability and focus) that influence young people's choices to participate or not to participate in youth programs.
Michael Rohrbaugh: Dr. Rohrbaugh is conducting a federally-funded clinical trial that compares Brief Strategic Family Therapy (BSFT) to "treatment as usual" in 8 community treatment programs around the country. His main aim in the study is to understand how and for whom BSFT works best. Secondary aims are to examine variations in how counselors and therapists view adolescent drug abuse, and to track changes in BSFT therapists' conceptual and behavioral skills during the course of their training and the clinical trial.
In another study funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Dr. Rohrbaugh is developing and evaluating a "family consultation" approach to help health-compromised smokers.
Stephen T. Russell: Dr Russell is committed to linking research and practical application in each of his programs of research. Examples of applications that have resulted from his applied research on adolescent sexuality include: Curricula on "Adolescent Health and Development" and "Understanding and supporting LGBT Youth," both of which have been used to train hundreds of youth professionals in the US, multiple publications that translate best practices in teen pregnancy prevention for use by pregnancy prevention program practitioners, and a CDC-funded website for youth program professionals on effectives strategies to help young people develop the skills and motivations to make healthy sexual choices.
Mari Wilhelm: Dr. Wilhelm oversees a variety of programs that contribute to linkages between research and practice (e.g., evaluation of programs designed to promote adolescent development, research and outreach on the relationship of fathers and their children, promotion of emotional well-being during pregnancy and new motherhood). For more information please refer to the ERAD web site at http://erad.arizona.edu.
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