Tag Archives: Research

Announcing the 2024 APAGS PSRG Grant Winners!

Every year, graduate students apply for $1,000 worth of funding to provide support for their psychological research endeavors through the American Psychological Association of Graduate Students (APAGS) Psychological Science Research Grant (PSRG). This year, we are proud to provide $12,000 of funding in $1,000 increments: $9,000 awarded to student researchers with an additional $3,000 awarded to innovative research dedicated to topics on diversity and inclusion. I am incredibly excited to announce the winners of our 2024 PSRG Grant applications!

Here are PSRG winners for the general category:

Christopher Gomez aims to investigate the relationship between exposure to community violence and experiences of peer conflict among Latino youth and how these experiences are related to changes in daily negative affect and peer conflict. Additionally, this study seeks to explore the mediating role of daily negative affect and peer conflict on the relationship between community violence exposure and school engagement.

Jill Smokoski proposes a mixed-methods study which aims to provide an overview of associations between racial trauma symptomology and key aspects of parenting. Qualitative interviewing will be used to allow for a greater understanding of how caregivers’ experiences of racial trauma shape their parenting beliefs and behaviors.

Jenna Stadheim plans to understand the experience of young adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and/or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) when enrolled in college by elucidating how symptoms are expressed and change over a year of college. Further, Jenna aims to compare these individuals’ experiences with substance use when compared to peers without ASD or ADHD.

Kevin Summers seeks to highlight the impact of racial and ethnic identity on inaccurately identifying children and adolescents as older than they really are, or “adultification.” Kevin plans to identify the identify the primary modalities in which the adultification of children might occur, while investigating the boundaries of adultification across racial and ethnic identities and age.

Sarah Dolan proposes a study to investigate the relationship between eating disorder symptoms and motivation for reward in women with and without loss-of-control eating. Sarah aims to test whether individuals with self-reported symptoms of an eating disorder differ significantly in their responses on tasks in the presence of food versus monetary rewards when compared to other populations.

Meghan Evans aims to understand the relationship between former foster youths’ current resilience and the perceived cultural humility and trauma-informed parenting of their poster parents. Meghan seeks to shed light on the importance of incorporating culturally humble and trauma-informed parenting approaches in foster parent training.

Celine Lu and co-PI Wendy Chu seek to examine the impact of an applicant’s intersectional race and mental health disclosures on graduate school admissions decisions. This team also aims to understand factors in evaluating applicants who disclose such details in their application paperwork and explore how faculty-level variables influence graduate admission decisions.

Elyssa Barrick proposes a study to establish the role of theory of mind in omniscience errors, or errors about another person’s knowledge. Additionally, Elyssa aims to investigate omniscience errors in individuals with autism spectrum disorder to further identify the strengths and weaknesses of theory of mind ability.

Zainab Shabbir seeks to understand the role of phenotypical characteristics on self-categorization choices among multiracial individuals. This study aims to further understand ethnic-racial identity development in multiracial individuals.

Here are the three diversity grant winners:

Qingyi Zhang proposes a grounded theory study to investigate the experiences of mattering and anti-mattering among Chinese international students in the United States. In doing so, this study aims to identify interpersonal experiences that enhance or deter Chinese international students’ feelings of mattering and anti-mattering, along with how these experiences are influenced by cultural factors and are associated with psychological well-being and sense of belonging.

Bek Urban aims to fill an existing gap in current literature by working to understand eating pathology in the trans, nonbinary, genderqueer and otherwise gender expansive (TNB) community. To do so, Bek plans to validate a new scale to measure the multifaceted nature of eating pathology in this population.

Adrienne Jankowski plans to evaluate the use of specific attention-based tests for the potential utilization as cognitive performance validity testing. Further, Adrienne aims to evaluate potential invariances to racial and ethnic language differences when completing the task.


As always, thank you to all the PSRG reviewers and the members of the APAGS Science Committee for dedicating their time and efforts to reviewing proposals and identifying winners. Be on the lookout for information on next year’s application process if you are interested in applying for future funding!

Meet the 2023 JSF Winners!

One of the many incredible resources provided through the American Psychological Association of Graduate Students (APAGS) Science Committee is access to funding to support student research. Every year, the APAGS Science Committee and Psi Chi work together to provide financial support to research-oriented graduate students in psychology programs (either in their first year or first semester of their second year) through the Junior Scientist Fellowship (JSF). This year, we are proud to announce that 16 students were awarded $1,000 in grant funding to support their psychological research endeavors from a pool of 42 applicants. Below are the recipients and their research topics.

Ann Bernhardt (Texas A&M University) plans to study the impact of ADHD and anxiety on diagnostic identification and college-level performance. Ann’s research aims to reframe anxiety as a compensatory tool to help students increase their self-efficacy and college success.

Marley Billman Miller (Auburn University) aims to assess how food insecurity influences stress levels in racial/ethnic minority women in rural populations. Findings from this study may impact our understanding of populations who experience adverse health outcomes related to food insecurity.

Rachel Brough (University of Denver) strives to continue previous research on the influence of affective and motivational states on cognitive control. Specifically, Rachel plans to investigate the relationship between uncertainty and an increased need for control.

Jonathan Doriscar (Northwestern University) will investigate the factors contributing to systemic racism and prejudice reduction. Jonathan’s work aims to bridge psychological research with societal change.

Eli Halbreich (Texas Tech University) will investigate the role of companion animals as social support for LGBTQIA+ youth and young adults. Eli’s research aims to understand the relationship between companion animals, coping with stress, and physical activity.

Elizabeth Kruse (University of Rochester) plans to evaluate the degree to which people can suppress the area of the brain allocated to focus their attention. Elizabeth hopes to use this research to inform interventions for improved cognitive performance.

Brandon Martin (Kent State University aims to understand how stigma related to weight and body image in men informs our understanding of men’s health. Brandon’s research will address a gap in existing research on weight management and stigma, which has previously focused on women.

Renee McCauley (George Mason University) strives to understand how speaking with an accent impacts an applicant’s likelihood of being hired in job interviews, and how gender further informs this relationship. Renee hopes to improve our understanding of gender and accented speech as this intersection of identities has been underrepresented in the research to date.

Maggie McCracken (University of Utah) plans to further research the interaction between multisensory cues, focusing on the benefits of auditory cues when performing tasks which require the perception of distance. Maggie hopes to investigate if the presence of sound will improve the performance on distance perception tasks for people who are visually impaired.

Charlie McDonald (Binghamton University – SUNY) aims to identify the mechanism of dissociation, or the disruption of consciousness, emotions, and other cognitive functions. Charlie hopes to use virtual and augmented reality to inform the development of treatments for dissociation.

Margaret Powers (University of Louisville) aims to examine the relationship between abstract thinking skills and understanding or engaging with information about systemic racism. Margaret further aims to incorporate the results of this study into anti-racist work in explaining systemic racism to racially privileged groups.

Krutika Rathod (University of Maine) plans to continue researching the mechanisms associating substance use, specifically regarding cannabis, to socioeconomic adversity. This research will continue to advance the fund of knowledge on the social determinants of substance use in rural communities.

Joseph Slade (Oregon State University) strives to investigate the degree to which students retain information when using artificial intelligence (AI) databases, such as ChatGPT. Joseph’s study will not only focus on the depth of student engagement with course material as they use AI to complete tasks but will also investigate the impact of learning when students believe information was generated by AI versus humans.

Nikhila Udupa (Florida State University) aims to develop and validate a measure used to examine the uncontrollability of suicidal thought. Nikhila hopes to further examine the association between uncontrollability of suicidal thought and other control-related constructs.

Marie Wild (Cornell University) will examine the impact of relocating older adults to a senior living facility on their emotion regulation abilities. This research will advance our understanding of how aging impacts our emotion regulation behaviors and inform interventions aiding in the adjustment of relocation in older adults.

Alireza Zareian Jahromi (Fordham University) aims to conduct a longitudinal study to investigate the mental health outcomes of Iranian people living in the United States following sociopolitical events in Iran. This research further aims to understand the impact of emotion regulation strategies, acculturation, and perceived social support on mental health outcomes following these sociopolitical events.

Congratulations to our winners and thank you to all who participated in the 2023 JSF process! The APAGS Science committee and Psi Chi are committed to supporting research-oriented graduate students by promoting their work in psychological sciences. Participating in the JSF allows students to gain experience in grant writing, ultimately preparing them to apply for further funding and the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Additional thanks to the APAGS reviewers for their time reviewing applications and providing valuable feedback to each applicant!

Posted by Sarah Kohnen, an APAGS Science Committee member and counseling psychology doctoral student at Chatham University. Feel free to reach out to Sarah with any questions you may have!

The Argument Against P-Values

There is concern that a substantial proportion of published research presents largely false findings (Ioannidis, 2005). This problem, in part, stems from social science’s reliance on null hypothesis statistical testing (NHST) given the incentive to achieve statistical significance (e.g., publications, grant funding). Research in the social sciences has historically adopted a Frequentist perspective, primarily reporting results using a dichotomous reject or non-reject decision strategy based on whether some test statistic surpasses a critical value and results in a statistically significant p-value (usually p > 0.05). Although useful in several ways, p-values are largely arbitrary metrics of statistical significance (Greenland et al., 2016), and they are often used incorrectly (Gelman, 2016). The use of p-values encourages a binary mindset when analyzing effects as either null or real, however, this binary outlook provides no information on the magnitude or precision of the effect. P-values can vary dramatically based on the population effect size and the sample size (Cumming, 2008). This reliance on an unstable statistical foundation has been discussed in the literature (Wasserstein, 2016), and while some journals have taken matters into their own hands (for example, Basic and Applied Social Psychology banned p-values and NHST), the field of psychology has largely failed to address the concerns raised by the use of NHST.                                     

Research is moving towards adopting new statistics as best practice, relying instead on estimations based on effect sizes, confidence intervals, and meta-analysis (Cumming, 2014). We, as graduate students in training, are in a position to push towards thinking in terms of estimations and away from dichotomously constrained interpretations. In contrast to the binary nature of p-values, a confidence interval is a set of plausible values for the point estimate. Although perhaps wide, the confidence interval accurately conveys the magnitude of uncertainty of the point estimate (Cumming, 2014), as well as the level of confidence in our results. For example, a 95% confidence interval that includes values for a population mean, μ, indicates 95% confidence that the lower and upper limits are likely lower and upper bounds for μ. The APA Publication Manual (APA, 2020) specifically outlines recommendations to report results based on effect size estimates and confidence intervals, rather than p-values. P-values are not well suited to drive our field forward in terms of precision and magnitude of estimates. Researchers should therefore focus on advancing the field by gaining an understanding of what the data can tell us about the magnitude of effects and the practical significance of those results. It is important for graduate students to adopt practices to produce reproducible and reliable research. One way to do so is to move beyond p-values.

How to move beyond p-values:

  • Prioritize estimation instead of null hypothesis testing or p-values
    • Formulate research questions in terms of estimation. Ex: How large is the effect of X on Y; to what extent does X impact Y?
  • Report confidence intervals and corresponding effect sizes
  • Include confidence intervals in figures (preferred over standard error bars)
  • Make interpretations and conclusions based on the magnitude of the effects rather than a dichotomous decision based on “statistical significance”

References                                                     

American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association 2020: the official guide to APA style (7th ed.). American Psychological Association.

Cumming, G. (2008). Replication and p intervals: p values predict the future only vaguely, but confidence intervals do much better. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3, 286– 300. doi:10.1111/j.1745-6924.2008.00079.x     

Cumming, G. (2014). The new statistics: why and how. Psychological science, 25(1), 7–29. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797613504966

Gelman, A. (2016). The problems with p-values are not just with p-values. The American Statistician, 70(10).

Greenland, S., Senn, S.J., Rothman, K.J. et al. (2016). Statistical tests, P values, confidence intervals, and power: a guide to misinterpretations. Eur J Epidemiol 31, 337–350. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10654-016-0149-3                                          

Ioannidis, J. P. A. (2005). Why most published research findings are false. PLoS Medicine, 2, e124. Retrieved from http:// www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal .pmed.0020124

Wasserstein, R.L., & Lazar, N.A. (2016). The ASA’s Statement on p-Values: Context, Process, and Purpose. The American Statistician, 70:2, 129-133, DOI: 10.1080/00031305.2016.1154108

Written by Marianne Chirica, an APAGS Science Committee member and a third-year graduate student in the Psychological and Brain Sciences Ph.D. program at Indiana University. Feel free to reach out to Marianne with any questions you may have!

Conducting Social Justice Research

While social justice topics in psychological research are not novel, sociopolitical changes in recent decades have perhaps illuminated the need for the incorporation of social justice research in psychological science and practice. Social justice and advocacy are woven into every corner of our professional experiences – from our didactic and academic competencies to our clinical training and ethics codes. Psychological science is no exception.

Incorporating social justice topics into our research can seem like a difficult feat. Everywhere you look, there are systemic hurdles that may stand in your way of feeling comfortable and confident taking on social justice research. Maybe it’s the voice in your head telling you “this project isn’t going to be the one to dismantle oppression,” or perhaps it’s a belief that your research does not fit under the umbrella of social justice topics. In other cases, it may be a lack of formal training in conducting research that utilizes appropriate methodology to produce socially just outcomes and findings. However, as students in psychology, we hold the power to not only ask “what answers do we not have yet?” but to rephrase the question into “whose voice is missing from the narrative?”

Here are some starting points for the interested researcher who hopes to embark on social justice research.

Qualitative Methods

If you’re anything like me, digesting quantitative research may bring you comfort. Something about attaching numbers and statistics to your work can make your analyses feel supported and concrete. However, is hard to fully understand someone’s experiences, reactions, and thoughts through numbers alone. Narrative-based research, interviews, and other qualitative methods allow researchers to analyze participant perspectives and experiences through a richness of storytelling. Participants can provide context to their answers and can help develop insight around a phenomenon through exploratory methods, often imperative to social justice research. When the question is regarding whose voice has not been incorporated into the narrative yet, sometimes the best methods are the ones utilizing the voices themselves. After all, our research is what makes psychology a science, and qualitative methodologies are just as rigorous as quantitative.

In some qualitative methodologies, participating community members are welcomed as collaborators to contribute to the design, implementation, and outcomes of the research. Participatory Action Research (PAR) and Community Based Research are two such examples of this. These qualitative approaches to research emphasize the importance of community, understanding sociocultural structures, and action, making them excellent methods to utilize when conducting social justice research. Importantly, they empower the stakeholders of the community you are working with to be active participants in your research.

Me-Search

I first heard the term “me-search” when starting graduate school. The appeal of doing research on a topic that resonated with me, my experiences, and potentially the related experiences of others has since fueled my research endeavors throughout my academic career. I began to realize how disconnected I felt from the research I was digesting. Experiences I knew all too well were seemingly nowhere to be found in the existing literature. I have found that me-search has been a great way to incorporate social justice topics into my own research. As a biracial, queer, gender-expansive graduate student, researching topics and experiences I know first-hand provides me not only with an opportunity to ensure voices like mine are heard, but also allows me to feel connected with the research I conduct. To put it simply, sometimes when you consider whose perspective is missing from the narrative, the answer can very feasibly be “mine.”

However, it is important to emphasize the need for self-care when conducting me-search related to social justice topics. Not only does researching something you have personally experienced make it easier to bring your work home with you, but me-search can put you in the position to reflect on the ways in which you yourself are impacted by oppressive systems. Participating in self-care activities and avoiding burnout is important to ensure you are prioritizing your well-being and can approach your research with interest and enthusiasm. Whether it’s putting space between yourself and academia or finding comfort in the connectedness you feel with the communities you are researching, self-care is yours to define and is an important part of conducting socially just research.

Becoming a researcher and scientist in psychology can feel like a daunting task. Additionally, knowing your research can inform social change can feel intimidating. Our research has the potential to be utilized for advocacy, fight against oppressive forces, and promote well-being. I encourage you to keep looking for the holes in our current literature and to listen for those voices that call to you in need of being amplified.

Resources

Cokley, K., & Awad, G. H. (2013). In defense of quantitative methods: Using the “Master’s Tools” to promote social justice. Journal for Social Action in Counseling and Psychology, 5(2), 26-41.

Fassinger, R. E., & Morrow, S. (2013). Toward best practices in quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-method research: A social justice perspective. Journal for Social Action in Counseling and Psychology, 5(2), 69-83.

Frost, D. M. (2018). Narrative approaches within a social psychology of social justice: The potential utility of narrative evidence. In P. Hammack (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Social Psychology and Social Justice (pp. 83-93). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Kidd, S. A., & Kral, M. J. (2005). Practicing participatory action research. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 52, 187-195.

Levitt, H. M., Motulsky, S. L., Wertz, F. J., Morrow, S. L., & Ponterotto, J. G. (2017). Recommendations for designing and reviewing qualitative research in psychology: Promoting methodological integrity. Qualitative Psychology, 4, 2-22.

Paquin, J. D., Tao, K. W., & Budge, S. L. (2019). Toward a psychotherapy science for all: Conducting ethical and socially just research. Psychotherapy, 56(4), 491.

Ponterotto, J. G. (2005). Qualitative research in counseling psychology: A primer on research paradigms and philosophy of science. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 52, 136-136.

Posted by Sarah Kohnen, an APAGS Science Committee member and counseling psychology doctoral student at Chatham University. Feel free to reach out to Sarah with any questions you may have!

Scary Statistics: Resources to Help Reduce Fear and Get on with Your Research

Statistics can seem scary and unapproachable: maybe math was not always your strongest subject or you’re still processing the trauma of by-hand ANOVAs in undergraduate statistics classes. Luckily, this blog is designed to help you make friends with statistics and move forward with your research. Specifically, I’ll focus on resources to help guide you through: 1) deciding which statistical analyses to run for a given question and 2) tools to use to run those statistical analyses.

Part 1: Choosing an appropriate statistical analysis

Step 1: Be familiar with commonly-used statistical analyses.

  • This free online self-paced course covers correlations, probability, confidence intervals, and significance tests.
  • This free online self-paced course covers regression, comparing groups, ANOVA, and non-parametric tests.
  • CenterStat provides free videos on youtube, including Structural Equation Modeling (or sign up for a free live class!)
    • They also offer classes on a wide range of more advanced statistics topics for a fee on their website.
  • If you prefer written information, Professor Peggy Kern created very helpful handouts!

Step 2: Choosing a statistical analysis to address your question.

  • You should consider whether the outcome of your analysis is addressing your research question. For example, if you did a correlation but you don’t know what the r value means for your research question, then you have wasted your time.
  • You also want to make sure that your research design/methods meet the requirements for the statistical test. For example, if you wanted to do an independent samples t-test but only have 1 group, then you are using the wrong test.
    • Decision trees can help visualize how to narrow down which test to use and what aspects to consider when choosing a test.

Source: https://www.peggykern.org/uploads/5/6/6/7/56678211/edu90790_decision_chart.pdf

Part 2: Using Statistical Software

  • Your University may have access to statistical software such as SPSS, SAS, and Matlab. In addition, R is free to download on their website and provides powerful statistical computing and graphics.

In conclusion, statistics are a powerful tool to use in research. With the right support, you too can learn to use it appropriately and effectively. Do not rush into running statistical tests, but first assess whether the test is appropriate. Learning a new statistical software, like R, takes time. Don’t be discouraged if you are learning it slowly, the best way to learn is to try!

Best of luck on your statistical journey!