The very active student researchers in our Child and Teen Studies Labs are included in all aspects of the research process, from library searches, through research design and proposals, to actual participant interface, data reduction, and analysis, and on to scholarly presentations and publications. Ethical considerations, comportment in the field, and participant rapport-building are also part of necessary training. Students are trained in careful data recording and in many cases, audio- and audio-visual records require time-consuming transcription before analyses can start. All students who make conceptual contributions and who are professionally directed are involved in reporting our findings to professional scholarly communities (see our list of papers and posters).
Both of our UBC and UNB Child and Teen Studies Labs are busy places. Most honours students have gone on to graduate work here and at other universities. My UNB doctoral students are now either teaching and conducting research in psychology departments or working in clinical-child/youth therapy. Some of my students spend a year in the Lab beyond the BA (hons) program conducting research, which appears to have been beneficial to their (and our) research progress. A good deal of good work is expected of students, as they can attest, but we also provide a collaborative, collegial environment in which students gain a wide range of skills in everything from language analysis to cortisol saliva sampling. Our research students are expected to engage in more than research in their area of primary interest, so they leave the Lab with broad theoretical and methodological bases as well as thoroughgoing appreciation of cognitive and emotional developmental processes from preschool through adolescence. Students’ interests in everything from lying to physiological concomitants of anger have influenced the direction of research activities in the Lab, just as the Lab has affected the direction of students’ interests.
At UNB: Stacey McKay And Joan Wright have successfully completed doctoral studies and are now psychologists in private clinical practice. Recent honours undergraduate psychology students: Elizabeth Gerhardt, Kaitlyn Wilson and Morgan Richard are completing graduate studies at Saint Mary’s University and UNB.
At UBC: Jessi Knutson is working with, and for, Indigenous youth in Vancouver; Dana Dmytro is a school psychologist in Maple Ridge, Jesse Lo is a behavioural interventionist; Ale Ribeiro has completed two Master’s degrees at Sao Paulo and UBC; Ye-Von Lee has moved on to Toronto to study and now practice nursing; Saman Fouladirad studied in medical school at UBC and is now a resident physician in Saskatchewan; Arantxa Mascarenas is in graduate school in Florida; Shuai Shao is now a doctoral student in psychology at UCSD; and Serena Jenkins has completed graduate studies in Lethbridge. Mahsa Yaghoubirad and Vanessa Figueiredo have completed doctoral studies and Neringa Dainaraviciute is soon to complete her interdisciplinary doctoral thesis.
Click here to see detailed profiles of past and current research assistants.
Click here to see photos of some of the fantastic work from the Lab.
Like and Different are quickening words, brooding and hatching.
Better and Worse are egg-sucking words, they leave only the shell.
– Ursula LeGuin, Always Coming Home