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The joint research lab of Drs. Ernest N. Jouriles and Renee McDonald studies sexual and physical violence directed at high-school and college-aged women, and methods for preventing such violence. The lab also has a long history of research on intimate partner violence (IPV) with a focus on its relation to child problems. This includes intervention research designed to assist women and children who have had to live with such violence. The lab has recently developed a program of research directed toward understanding factors related to resilience among diverse groups of adolescents who have been confronted with adversity (e.g., sexual abuse, discrimination).

Nguyen, J. (2020). Sexual Victimization, Sexual Orientation, and Engagement in Hookups. Thesis research supervised by E. N. Jouriles and R. McDonald.

Jouriles, E. N., Gower, T., Rancher, C., Johnson, E., Jackson, M. L., & McDonald, R. (2020). Families seeking services for sexual abuse: Intimate partner violence, mothers’ psychological distress, and mother-adolescent conflict. Journal of Family Psychology. Advance online publication.

Dr. Austin Baldwin conducts research focused on understanding the affective, cognitive, and motivational factors that influence individuals’ decisions to engage in and maintain health behaviors. This includes research to understand how to adapt and optimize health behavior interventions and among diverse populations (SES, race/ethnicity), as well as how to measure health behavior in diverse populations.

Baldwin, A.S., Zhu, H., Rochefort, C.R., Marks, E., Fullington, H.M., Rodriguez, S.A., Kassa, S., & Tiro, J.A. (2021). Mechanisms of self-persuasion intervention for HPV vaccination: Testing memory and autonomous motivation. Health Psychology, 40, 887-896.

Rochefort, C., Baldwin, A. S., Tiro, J., & Bowen, M. E. (2020). Evaluating the Validity of the Risk Perception Survey for Developing Diabetes Scale in a Safety-Net Clinic Population of English and Spanish Speakers. The Diabetes Educator, 46(1), 73-82.

Dr. Chrystyna Kouros studies how the quality of family interactions is associated with individuals’ mental health over time. Among family processes, her work focuses primarily on children’s exposure to everyday marital disagreements and parental depression. Dr. Kouros’ research emphasizes the importance of studying these association among neurodiverse populations of children. Her current NICHD-funded study is examining how various family processes are linked with co-occurring internalizing symptoms among children on the autism spectrum.

Kouros, C. D., & Ekas, N. V. (2017-2020). Identifying longitudinal mechanisms linking the quality of family relationships and comorbid internalizing symptoms among children with autism spectrum disorder. Research study funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. ¾«¶«´«Ã½ graduate assistants involved in this research: Chelsea N. Carson, Emily Johnson, Sharyl E. Wee.

Collaboration with Dr. Nancy Yu at City University of Hong Kong on study funded by the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong, titled Congruence in Immigrant Mother-child Dyads: Examining
Intergenerational Dynamics Using the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model. Representative projects: 

Qu, D., Kouros, C. D., & Yu, N. Z. (2020). Congruence and discrepancy in migrant children’s and their mothers’ perceived discrimination: Using response surface analysis to examine the effects on distress.

Qu, D., Huang, J., Kouros, C. D., & Yu, N,. Z. (2020). Dyadic effects of fluid mindset on psychological growth in immigrant mothers and their children: Indirect effect of resilience. Family Process.

Dr. Holly Bowen is a cognitive neuroscientist who studies how affective states, specifically emotion and motivation, influence how we form memories and remember past experiences. She is particularly interested in how the links between emotion, motivation and memory are impacted by age-related changes. While aging is often associated with declines in memory and brain health, Dr. Bowen’s research has contributed to the evidence that affective processes, such as sensitivity to rewards, sometimes improve with age. Dr. Bowen’s research on these topics may stimulate the development of memory interventions, as well as research into pharmacological treatment of age-related memory decline.

Bowen, H.J. Gallant, S.N. & Moon, D.H. (2020) Influence of Reward Motivation on Directed Forgetting in Younger and Older Adults. Frontiers in Psychology, 11:1764.

Bowen, H.J., Ford, J.H., Grady, C.L. & Spaniol, J. (2020). Frontostriatal Functional Connectivity Supports Reward-Enhanced Memory in Older Adults. Neurobiology of Aging, 90, 1-12.