Tag Archives: Psychology

Graduate Student Researchers Win Big!

The results are in: 15 exceptional graduate student projects have been selected from the pool of highly-competitive applications for the Psychological Science Research Grant (PSRG). This $1,000 grant, sponsored yearly by APAGS, is used to fund innovative research projects in psychological science. All APA graduate student affiliates are eligible, resulting in a diverse pool of applications from schools across the country who are studying a variety of topics in psychology and neuroscience. Given the importance of diversity-focused research, additional funding was specifically reserved for those studies that substantially address issues of diversity as defined by the APA’s 2017 Multicultural Guidelines.

Below is a brief review of the 2018 winners and their projects:

  • Mónica Acevedo-Molina (University of Arizona) will be studying the influence of bilingualism on memory in Hispanic individuals. Mónica aims to understand how bilingualism impacts the specificity of autobiographic memory in Hispanics, as well as the influence of inhibition on that specificity.
  • Brooke Bartlett (University of Houston) will be studying the role of distress tolerance in the relationship between trauma cue reactivity and posttraumatic stress disorder symptom severity. Specifically, Brooke aims to understand whether distress tolerance moderates that relationship, above and beyond the impact of important factors such as the amount of trauma a person has experienced, as well as any other mental health conditions they may be battling.
  • Alexis Blessing (The University of Texas at San Antonio) will be studying ways to reduce the public stigma associated with media depictions of service members and veterans. Specifically, Alexis believes that self-compassion may buffer negative responses to stigmatizing media accounts of violent acts by veterans with PTSD.
  • Brittney Evans (Drexel University) will be studying the feasibility and acceptability of a remote parent coaching intervention for parents of children who are overweight or obese. The goal of this intervention is to increase the use of adaptive parenting techniques and decrease the use of ineffective parenting practices in order to improve child behaviors during mealtimes.
  • Maya Godbole (City University of New York, CUNY) will be studying the effect of sex discrimination policies on women’s expectation of bias and performance in organizations. Specifically, Maya aims to understand whether the inclusion of language that explicitly acknowledges subtle forms of sexism in policy documents influences women’s participation in organizations as well as their performance expectations.
  • Taylor Hendershott (Washington University in St. Louis) will be developing a brief tool for assessing people’s spatial navigation strategy use and ability. This type of task will allow for the targeted assessment of cognitive functions and will be useful for academics and clinicians working to understand and measure the cognitive impairment associated with neurodegenerative diseases.
  • Tiffany Jenzer (University at Buffalo, SUNY) will be studying the relationship between emotion regulation strategies and alcohol use. Specifically, Tiffany aims to understand how the ability to choose between a variety of emotion regulation strategies, as well as the ability to pick a strategy that appropriately fits the situation impact alcohol use.
  • Parisa Kaliush (University of Utah) will be studying the intergenerational effects of mothers with a history of childhood maltreatment. Specifically, Parisa aims to understand whether maternal parasympathetic activity during pregnancy explains the relationship between their history of childhood maltreatment and their newborn’s emotional reactivity and attention.
  • Nathan Kearns (University of North Texas) will be studying the role of traumatic stress and alcohol on driving behaviors. Specifically, Nathan will be investigating both the independent and additive effects of trauma-related stress and acute alcohol intoxication on driving-related risk-taking.
  • Lilian Yanqing Li (University of California, Irvine) will be studying novel strategies for addressing emotion regulation deficits in people with schizophrenia and schizotypy. Lilian aims to understand if third-person self-talk is an effective strategy for regulating negative emotions, without requiring additional cognitive control.
  • Albert Ly (Loma Linda University) will be studying diabetes treatment adherence among a diverse sample of adults. Albert aims to understand the role culture and U.S. generational status play in disease-related distress and treatment adherence.
  • Melissa McWilliams (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) will be evaluating the impact of integrated text message coaching as an added supplement to behavioral parent training. In particular, Melissa will be studying whether text message coaching improves parenting practices, as well as parental engagement in and attitude about the parent training curriculum.
  • Tommy Ho-Yee Ng (Temple University) will be studying the nature of reward processing for children of parents with unipolar depression and bipolar disorder. Tommy aims to understand how reward processing may be deficient in these children compared to healthy controls, as well as if children of parents with bipolar disorder can be differentiated from children of parents with unipolar depression based on their reward processing.
  • Fallon Ringer (Florida State University) will be studying the role of suicide-related internet use in suicide risk. Fallon aims to understand if suicide-related internet use is associated with greater suicidal ideation, intent, and prior suicidal behaviors, as well as fearlessness about death.
  • Selime Salim (Miami University) will be studying the relationship between sexual victimization and suicidality among bisexual women. In particular, Selime aims to understand the role stigma, internalized sexism, and social reactions to sexual assault disclosure play in that relationship.

Congratulations to all of the winners!

Want your name to be featured next year? Be sure to apply! Applications are due in early December for the 2019 PSRG. Remember: grant writing has many benefits, including being a wonderful way to think critically about your research ideas, have valuable discussions with your mentor(s), and boost your resume. Worried you don’t know how to write a grant? Check out this great post by the Association for Psychological Science with tips and tricks.

The APAGS Science Committee would like to acknowledge and thank the following reviewers for their help and support  in reviewing applications this year: Alyssa DeVito, Rachel Sweenie, Laura Werner, Megan Williams, Amy Wing-Lam Chong, Steven Hobaica, Amanda Sanchez, Kyle Simon, Elyssa Berney, Juan Pantoja-Patino, Taymy Caso, and Elizabeth Louis.

 

Written by:
Melanie Arenson, B.S., Member, APAGS Science Committee
Renee Cloutier, M.S., Chair, APAGS Science Committee

Personal Finance for Psychology Trainees

by: The Debt Shrink

FinancesIn grad school they didn’t teach us about repaying student loans. They also didn’t teach how much we could expect to earn after we graduated.

Fortunately, during undergrad I attended a seminar by current grad students about applying to grad school. They recommended we ONLY apply to programs that offer both tuition waivers and stipends. Yes, such programs are more competitive, but the extra efforts to get more lab experience, present  posters, and earn high GRE scores to get in could save a hundred thousand dollars or more. This was the best advice I received!

Student loans can be a median of $160,000 for PsyDs, which is significantly higher than the median Clinical/Counseling PhDs ($76,500) and Research and other PhDs ($72,500). However, there are no significant differences in pay between the two degrees. Furthermore, most early career psychologists say they earned less money than they had expected (Doran  et al., 2016).

In 2017, the median salary for psychologists was $77,030 ($75,090 for clinical/counseling/school psychologists, $87,100 for I/O psychologists, $97,740 for other psychologists) (US Dept of Labor Statistics).

I had a baby while on internship, and was the sole provider for my family of three while on post-doc. Luckily, I did graduate from a PhD program with tuition waivers and I worked as an RA. However, I still took on debt, which I had to start repaying six months after graduating!

During my two-year post-doc, I kept my expenses as low as possible. Although I was making twice as much money, I continued to live as if I were an intern and threw all the “extra” money I was making toward my loans.  When I started a staff position, I made nearly double the salary as I did during post-doc. However, I still continued to live as if I were an intern. Within three years of graduating, I had paid off my loans (without any forgiveness or repayment plans)! Five months after that, I had enough for a down payment on my house. I’ve had my home for 5 years, and plan to have it paid off in another 2!

I know that after 30 years of hard work and living like a student, you will be eager to finally  be making money. But if you are able to keep your expenses at near-student levels during post-doc and your first few years of your career, your future-self will thank you!

If you are having difficulty getting by on your grad school or internship stipend, what are the reasons?

Do you live in an area with a ridiculous housing market and rents have skyrocketed? If so, seriously consider getting a roommate (or two). Aim for rent to be <30% of your annual income.

Do you own more car than you can afford? If so, consider selling it (even if you have to pay to get out from under it). Aim for car value to be <50% of your annual income.

Are your food expenses taking a big part of your salary? If so, this is a really easy category to cut back on. Some families manage to spend only $100 per person per month for food, but you don’t have to be that extreme.

Do you have debt but continue to engage in “luxuries” (e.g., salon services, gym memberships, gourmet coffee). If so, remind yourself that you have negative net worth and look for free or inexpensive alternatives. You’ve literally been taking out a loan to pay for your gym membership. Remember, “I can charge it” isn’t the same as “I can afford it.”

Even if you’re facing a mortgage-sized student loan payment, it is possible to repay it!

For more tips, check out my personal finance blog geared toward psychology trainees and early career psychologists: The Debt Shrink.

References:

Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor (2018). Occupational Outlook Handbook, Psychologists. Retrieved from https://www.bls.gov/ooh/life-physical-and-social-science/psychologists.htm

Doran, J. M., Kraha, A., Marks, L. R., Ameen, E. J., & El-Ghoroury, N. H. (2016). Graduate debt in psychology: A quantitative analysis. Training and Education in Professional Psychology, 10(1), 3-13. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/tep0000112

Where Science Meets Policy Part 1: Involving Stakeholders in Every Step of Your Research

Where Science Meets Policy

Part 1: Involving Stakeholders in Every Step of Your Research

Melanie Arenson, Renee Cloutier, Travis Loughran, Mary Fernandes

There is a well-known lack of consistent translation of scientific research into public policy. To address this, the scientific community has instituted a substantial push to involve “stakeholders” in our research, in order to make it more targeted, translatable, and impactful. But what does that mean practically, and how do we do it?

What is a stakeholder?

According to the American Psychological Association, stakeholders include anybody that could be influenced by the research you conduct (e.g., they have a “stake” in it). What does that look like? Well, imagine you’re developing a new intervention for adolescents. Stakeholders for such a project might include the people receiving and providing the treatment (e.g. the adolescent and therapist), as well as the child’s parents, teachers, and peers, the administrators in both the treatment setting and the school, and the policy-makers dictating the allocation of school-based resources. Depending on your area of research, this group of stakeholders may expand to include businesses, insurance companies, curriculum writers, and nonprofits.

Why involve them at all?

Too often in academic settings, we formulate a question, conduct the research in our labs, find exciting results, publish a paper in an academic journal, and then that research gets cited by other academics in other academic journals. The problem with that? The information we’ve discovered doesn’t ever actually leave the world in which it was created.

Stakeholders, if engaged properly, are uniquely positioned in two ways to help change that: (1) their opinions can be sought to ensure that the questions we ask, the research paradigms we create, and the treatments we develop appropriately reflect the real-world applications that interested us in the first place; and (2) they hold connections that can help with dissemination when we find those really cool results. They are mired in the frequently messy reality that we try to emulate in our labs, and understand what is feasible and what isn’t because they live it, day to day, in a way we as researchers rarely do. They also hold connections in the community and have specialized insights into the most appropriate and impactful way to translate our research to the populations that need to hear it the most.

So how do we involve them?

This can depend on your setting, but below are a few options:

1)    Use your existing network. Most likely, you can think of a few stakeholders you already know, whether in a professional or personal context. One of the easiest ways to get stakeholders involved is to ask those people to have coffee with you and chat. If they’re interested in what you’re doing they might be a good person to get involved, but they also can likely suggest people they know that might be able to help.

2)    Focus groups are extremely helpful. They can be used as sources for more permanent stakeholder involvement (e.g. you can recruit stakeholders that will remain involved for the duration of the project), but they also are formalized way to engage stakeholders just as they are.  Recruit as broad of a range of stakeholders as you can, know the questions you want to ask, and be prepared to lightly guide a discussion. Keep in mind that it may be helpful to group participants by stakeholder type, depending on your project and the diversity of stakeholders. If someone seems particularly insightful, motivated, and you think they may be good fit for your research team, talk to them about the possibility of getting more involved (and keep a list of these types of people as possible stakeholders for future projects!).

3)   Use conferences to build connections. When you’re talking to colleagues about your research, don’t forget to talk about recruiting stakeholders (they may know someone that would be a perfect fit!), and attend talks that are related to the research you want to do as they may give you an idea for stakeholders you haven’t thought of. Check the program for any stakeholder-related gatherings, which may include a talk by patients, booths run by educators and/or companies, or division-specific events related to specific providers.

4)   Don’t forget about your professional organizations. Many organizations have committees and departments dedicated to influencing and crafting policy. These sub-organizations can connect you and your academic work to the policy arenas you want to influence. Reach out to committee members and tell them about your research and the implications you think it has. They’ll be perfectly positioned to help you translate your findings to the community stakeholders you want to reach. They also may be able to direct you resources and stakeholders you haven’t thought of.

5)   Finally, use your research. Talk to your participants, their parents, and the community connections you use to recruit your sample, and ask them if they would like a summary of your findings once your research is complete. If you haven’t already built a relationship with them, offering to reach out (and taking the time to do it!) is a great foundation. Similar to focus groups, if you think any of those people would be a good fit for your research, offer the opportunity for them to get involved in future projects.

Breaking the academic loop:

Once you have successfully designed, executed, and analyzed your research project, how do you convey the findings to a broad range of stakeholders? Researchers and policy makers often have different decision-making processes, time-lines, vocabularies, and incentives (Brownson, Royer, Ewing, & McBride, 2006; Grande et al., 2014), which create barriers to effective communication. Overcoming these barriers requires several, multi-level actions, many of which will be addressed in this series. Follow us for our next piece on how to write academic papers for a broad range of stakeholders.

 

References:

Brownson, R. C., Royer, C., Ewing, R., & McBride, T. D. (2006). Researchers and policymakers: travelers in parallel universes. American journal of preventive medicine, 30(2), 164-172.

Grande, D., Gollust, S. E., Pany, M., Seymour, J., Goss, A., Kilaru, A., & Meisel, Z. (2014). Translating research for health policy: researchers’ perceptions and use of social media. Health Affairs, 33(7), 1278-1285.

 

Graduate Student Voting Rights: What Do Our Presidential Candidates Think?

The APAGS Committee has proposed an APA Bylaws and Rules change that will allow  for graduate student affiliate members of APA to vote in elections for the President-elect and Members of the Board of Directors, along with bylaws amendments and the distribution of seats on the APA Council of Representatives.

The APAGS Committee is bringing this proposal to Boards and Committees of APA this fall, and to the Board of Directors and the Council of Representatives next year. If the change is approved by Council, and then by the current voting members of APA, approximately 21,000 graduate student members of APA could be eligible to vote in 2020 and beyond.

We asked the five members currently running for APA President-elect the following question:

 “Should APA Graduate Student members be given the privilege to vote on all association matters within APA after one year of membership?”

 Here’s how they responded. You can learn more about the candidates here.

cerbone-armand_tcm7-234790 Armand R. Cerbone, PhD

“I strongly support APAGS in seeking voting privileges.  Having organized graduate representation within my department, I know the importance of enfranchising graduate voices.  As a faculty member introducing a course on homosexuality in 1983, I recruited at my expense a lesbian student to co-teach because we both understood I could not appropriately represent the experience of queer women.  While the future affects all psychologists, it affects psychology students most.  My campaign is about the future of psychology even more than our past.  I will seek the critical input of APAGS in developing a 25/50-year vision plan for psychology.”

chin-jean-lau_tcm7-234777 Jean Lau Chin, EdD

“Graduate students make up a significant portion of our APA membership.  They should have a voice because they are the future of our profession.  As APAGS, they have already demonstrated that their participation in governance has been meaningful and relevant, and that they have been responsible in providing important input on association matters. We need to view the vibrancy of our profession and association as one where we seek and value the perspectives of members along the entire spectrum of their career.  Hence, I support giving graduate students the privilege to vote on association matters including elections after one year of membership.”

hollon-steven_tcm7-234780Steven D. Hollon, PhD

“APA is getting older and has trouble getting students to join and early career professionals to convert. The best way to excite new professionals entering the field is to give them the vote while they are still students and I would not make them wait the year. You join you vote. If we want students to invest in the discipline then we need to invest in them. We secure our future as an organization if we trust our future generations.”

board-shullman_tcm7-211998Sandra L. Shullman, PhD

“Graduate students have an important voice to contribute to APA.  I value their contributions and support their voting and representation.  Voting is an opening invitation that can lead to greater engagement in APA, but we must couple voting with opportunities for leadership training/development; meaningful ways to give feedback to our discipline/profession; and encouragement to support/engage in advocacy, public policy and social justice initiatives.  These experiences, along with the opportunity to vote, can build career-long engagement and commitment to APA’s future.  As APA President, I would look forward to working with APAGS to turn this goal into successful action. www.SandyShullmanForAPAPresident.com  #sandys4apaprez #sandy2020”

whitbourne-susan_tcm7-234784Susan Krauss Whitbourne, PhD

“As a long-time supporter of the work of APAGS, I am in favor of the proposal to grant voting privileges to graduate students in APA-wide elections. This step would represent an important way to ensure that APA reflects the concerns of those who are entering our discipline and also to provide graduate students with a voice in the future of the association. One of the key components of my presidential platform is that APA needs to reflect the interests of early career psychologists, and therefore this proposal is consistent with my own priorities to keep the association vital and flourishing.”

We thank all candidates for their openness to this proposed seismic shift in APA.

CARED perspectives: So what is this psychology diversity committee all about?

This blog post is a part of the series, “CARED Perspectives,” developed by the APAGS Committee for the Advancement of Racial and Ethnic Diversity. This series will discuss current events and how these events relate to graduate students in psychology. If you are interested in contributing to the CARED Perspectives series, please contact Lincoln Hill.

Engagement with diversity, cultural, and individual differences has become a core aspect of clinical training, supervision, and research in psychology (American Psychological Association, 2006). In this spirit of proactively interacting with diversity in its varied forms, many psychology departments have created dedicated “diversity committees.” While a name and general scope may be shared, diversity committees take many forms: from a student led forum to address graduate program concerns, to a faculty committee working towards recruiting diverse staff and students (Rogers & Molina, 2006). Diversity committees can be a positive vehicle of change, but also a burden on faculty and students with diverse identities who take on the invisible labor of serving on many such committees, and face greater expectations to do so than are placed on their majority group peers (Vasquez et al., 2006)

To better understand the inner-workings of diversity committees, I gathered the perspectives of four psychology graduate students who served on a diversity committee at their respective institutions. In particular, I asked these students to: reflect on the value in having a departmental diversity committee; to identify what was achieved through their committee’s work; and to share the extent to which student voices guided, were heard, or were marginalized by the fellow committee members. Below I offer a summary of their varied perspectives and some considerations for students and faculty considering developing a diversity committee within their department.

What is the value in having a diversity committee?

  • Dedicated space conducive to making change – a key prerequisite to undertaking any further work
  • Having an avenue for dialogue that doesn’t naturally occur between students, faculty, and staff
  • Ensuring accountability at the department level to operating in a manner consistent with principles of equity and diversity
  • Providing a sense of safety for students who have reservations about coming forward with their concerns
  • Addressing qualitative inclusion of diverse perspectives, experiences, and identities

What was achieved on the committee during your tenure?

  • Making faculty more aware of student concerns
  • Creating professional development opportunities
  • Developing workshops/brown bag lunches in response to current events
  • Inviting speakers with expertise in diversity topics
  • Developing events (e.g., diversity recruitment weekend) and tools (e.g., website re-design) to recruit more students from diverse backgrounds
  • Creating a survey to assess climate, student experiences and needs

How were student voices engaged on the committee?

        Diversity committee formats varied greatly – from student led efforts to faculty committees with one designated student representative. Students on faculty committees indicated varied experiences. One reported receiving respect and useful professional guidance, while another reported not being “truly heard” by faculty. Perhaps as a result of these dynamics, some students reported that creating departmental change through the work of a diversity committee is a slow moving process, which may involve only surface level changes in the beginning. Several students commented on the value of models where they were able to hold separate meetings with their peers to amass a list of students’ perspectives and concerns, which they could report back to the faculty-led diversity committee. One student in particular indicated that this mode is effective because students often feel more comfortable bringing concerns forward to other students, as opposed to faculty.

        While diversity committees are diverse in their form, tasks, operation, and membership, all students acknowledged the value in their existence and several expressed gratitude in being able to advocate for diversity at a higher level. As one student said, “diversity efforts take some trial and error to evolve for the better, but these programs are most valuable when we learn from and correct our mistakes.”

What do you think? We want to hear from you in the comments!

  • Have you been involved in a diversity committee? What the impetus was for establishing this committee? Was your committee initiated by students? Or staff/faculty? Has your committee filled a gap that was there prior to the committee starting up?
  • Have you found that individuals of color and those with other diverse identities have disproportionately taken on this work?
  • What’s your take on this topic?

Acknowledgments:  A huge thank you to the students who shared their experiences for the purpose of this post!

References

American Psychological Association. 2006. Guidelines and Principles for Accreditation of Programs in Professional Psychology (G&P). Retrieved from: http://www.apa.org/ed/accreditation/about/policies/guiding-principles.pdf

Rogers, M. R., & Molina, L. E. (2006). Exemplary efforts in psychology to recruit and retain graduate students of color. American Psychologist, 61(2), 143.

Vasquez, M. J., Lott, B., García-Vázquez, E., Grant, S. K., Iwamasa, G. Y., Molina, L. E., … & Vestal-Dowdy, E. (2006). Personal reflections: Barriers and strategies in increasing diversity in psychology. American Psychologist, 61(2), 157.

Check out previous CARED Perspective posts: