Supervising Faculty: Drs. Vaughn-Coaxum and Goldstein
Contact: Dr. Rachel Vaughn-Coaxum, coaxumra@upmc.edu
Area of Research: Clinical Psychology
Description of Research: The Environmental Context and Youth Mental Health Lab conducts research to examine how youths’ life experiences (particularly the experience of childhood adversity) impact the onset, assessment, and treatment of youth depression and related psychopathologies. Our primary areas of study include mood, cognitive control and executive functioning, therapy-based learning, and childhood adversity. Our recent and ongoing studies explore different ways in which adverse life experiences during childhood influence cognition and behavior in adolescents, including how these factors affect therapy processes (like learning new skills) and therapy outcomes. We work with adolescents with elevated depression symptoms and their parents, and use research methods that include interviews, focus groups, self-report questionnaires, lab-based tasks assessing cognitive functioning, and psychophysiology (electrodermal activity and heart rate variability).
Duties of Students: Students’ research activities include assisting with recruitment and data collection for focus groups with adolescents with lived experience of depression (fall only); qualitative coding and analysis of individual interviews and focus groups with adolescents; processing and scoring psychophysiological and cognitive task data; attending weekly lab student research meetings
Requirements:
- Overall GPA of 3.0 or higher
- 12 credits of Psychology (including current term)
- STAT 0200/1000/1100 Statistics
- PSY 0036 Research Methods Lecture
- PSY 0037 Research Methods Lab
- Minimum of 2 credit hours and 2 consecutive terms are necessary for sufficient training in all required research methods and protocols
Recruitment Process: All students interested in our PSY 1903 directed research opportunity will be asked to submit a brief cover letter and resume. In addition to the course prerequisites students will be required to meet the follow criteria for consideration:
• • Commitment to a recurring schedule of directed research hours each week. For students to maximize their opportunity to work with adolescent research participants, we ask all students to have at least one afternoon or evening a week when they would be available to help with study visits after school hours. All students who demonstrate a specific interest in our research opportunities (per the content of their cover letters) will be invited to meet with Dr. Rachel Vaughn-Coaxum. She will discuss the aims of the research and the available research opportunities during that semester. She will also share her mentorship goals and the expectations for students participating in directed research with our group. Time will be reserved for students to ask questions, and all students will be asked a standard set of interview questions reviewed by myself and Dr. Vaughn-Coaxum. Students will be accepted on a rolling basis until all available positions are filled for the semester. Priority will be given to students with an interest and/or experience in working with youth, interest in youth psychopathology, and strong interpersonal skills for working with a team and with youth research participants.
Terms offered: Fall, Spring, Summer
Number of Students: 3