From supporting healthy development and strengthening families to improving healthcare, preventing substance misuse, and fostering meaningful social connection, HD research addresses challenges that matter in people’s everyday lives. Our faculty and graduate students continue to produce scholarship with practical implications for helping individuals, families, and communities thrive. Here are some highlights from their recent work.
Helping Young Adults Make Healthier Choices
How can families and colleges help young adults navigate alcohol and cannabis use? New research from HD faculty and graduate students tackles that question from two directions. Jennifer Duckworth, Kristi Morrison, Gitanjali Shrestha, Brittany Cooper, and colleagues identified distinct patterns of substance use among students attending two-year colleges, helping pinpoint groups that may benefit from more tailored prevention efforts. In a second study, Morrison, Duckworth, Cooper, and Laura Hill evaluated a simple parent-based intervention delivered before students entered college. Students whose parents received the handbook reported fewer alcohol- and cannabis-related consequences during their first semester, suggesting that parents can continue to play an important preventive role even as their children transition to college. Read the two-year college study | Read the parent-intervention study
Supporting Health and Wellbeing as We Age
Two recent projects involving Raven Weaver and Cory Bolkan explore how health and social systems can better serve people later in life. In one study, HD graduate student Kelly O’Sullivan, Weaver, Bolkan, and colleagues examined a partnership connecting primary-care patients with an Area Agency on Aging. Nearly three-quarters of the older adults screened reported at least one unmet social need, underscoring the potential value of stronger connections between healthcare and community-based services. In related work, Autumn Decker, Weaver, Bolkan, and colleagues reviewed a decade of programs designed to build “death literacy” among U.S. health-professions students: the knowledge and skills needed to understand and communicate effectively about death and dying. Together, the studies highlight the importance of preparing both systems and professionals to respond to the complex needs of an aging population. Read the aging-services study | Read the death-literacy review
From Infant Brains to Childhood Boredom
What can brain activity tell us about early development, and even about how children handle being bored? Sammy Perone and colleagues addressed both questions in recent studies using EEG. In one, Perone and Maria Gartstein examined patterns of brain-network organization among infants ages 6 to 12 months, finding developmental changes in how brain activity is integrated and segregated and associations with aspects of temperament. In another, Perone, HD graduate student Aryn Vaughan, Alana Anderson, and Elizabeth Weybright studied 4- to 6-year-olds during a deliberately boring task. Children whose parents reported allowing them to resolve boredom on their own showed a pattern of brain activity consistent with greater approach motivation, offering intriguing evidence about how children may learn to regulate boredom. Read the infant brain-development study | Read the childhood boredom study
Strengthening Families and Youth in Child Welfare
Recent work from HD Vancouver highlights ways that families, caregivers, and child-welfare systems can better support young people. Amy Salazar, Jenna Thompson, and colleagues developed a new measure of foster and adoptive caregivers’ readiness to care for LGBTQ+ youth, providing a potential tool for identifying training and support needs and improving placement fit. In another project, Thompson, Salazar, HD graduate student Sara Spiers, and collaborators evaluated a training-and-coaching model designed to strengthen the capacity of child-welfare professionals and organizations to meaningfully engage young people in decisions about their lives. Sara Waters and colleagues, meanwhile, centered the experiences of urban Indigenous caregivers in research examining how kinship, culture, community, and belonging can contribute to healing from intergenerational trauma. Together, the projects illustrate HD’s commitment to research that not only studies families and young people but also strengthens the systems and communities that support them. Read the caregiver-readiness study | Read the youth-engagement study | Read the Indigenous caregiving study
Creating Environments Where People Can Thrive
Two new studies ask how the environments surrounding young people can help them succeed. Isabella Santiago, Marley Fox, and Nicole Scalise examined college students’ memories of their secondary-school math classrooms through the lens of self-determination theory. More positive experiences—especially those reflecting autonomy, competence, and connection with others—were associated with lower math anxiety in college, and students pursuing STEM majors recalled more positive secondary-school math experiences than their non-STEM peers. At the systems level, Brittany Cooper, Gitanjali Shrestha, and colleagues examined how evidence-based prevention processes can better incorporate community priorities and perspectives. Their work offers a framework for strengthening the connection between rigorous evidence and the needs of the communities prevention systems are intended to serve. Read the mathematics study | Read the community-centered prevention study
Connection, Affection, and Everyday Wellbeing
Recent HD scholarship also explores how everyday experiences of stress, affection, and social connection contribute to wellbeing. Michael Cleveland and colleagues compared self-selected relaxing music with quiet reading before a stressful task. Both activities reduced anticipatory anxiety, while physiological measures revealed different patterns of stress response, opening new questions about how ordinary activities may help people prepare for stressful experiences. In research on close relationships, Lisa van Raalte and Kory Floyd examined how getting the amount of cuddling one desires relates to relationship satisfaction, closeness, and trust. Floyd and Nicole Zenzola take a broader look at human connection in a new book chapter addressing affectionate communication as a potential antidote to loneliness. They consider not only the established benefits of giving and receiving affection but also ways communication technologies—from video calls to emerging forms of virtual touch—could help people maintain affectionate connections when physical proximity is not possible. Read the music and stress study | Read the cuddling study | Read the Floyd & Zenzola chapter