Our Research
We strive to understand how adolescents and emerging adults identify and express themselves as well as the ways that practitioners and families can promote young people’s sense of self and agency. We are particularly interested in girls and underrepresented young people whose lives may not be extensively researched or understood. This research has been made possible with the support of the National Institutes for Health, Children and Screens: Institute of Digital Media & Child Development, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation New Connections program, the CDC, the Schott Foundation for Public Education, I Am Strong Foundation, and the Wellesley Centers for Women.
Our research examines the complex factors that determine a young person’s identity, including their race, gender, sexuality, and socio-economic status. We seek to distinguish the unique paths and commonalities that adolescents experience, in regard to their identities and their varied lived experiences. We examine how familial ties, social norms, and various forms of media influence decisions and self-perceptions about one’s identity.
Related research includes:
- Longitudinal assessment of specificity in adolescent-dog relationships and adaptive coping for youth with social anxiety
- Discrimination and racial socialization on Asian American parent and youth mental health
- Parental Behavior, Human-Animal Interaction, and Adolescent Development
- Risk and Resilience of Media and Social Networking use in Vulnerable Adolescent Populations
- Media and Identity Study
- Promoting Public Awareness of the Road to Educational Equity for Girls of Color: A Multi-level Strategy
- Adolescent Mixed-Ancestry Identity: A Measurement Pilot
Related publications includes:
- Using Technology to Improve the Health of Underserved Populations
- Race, context, and privilege: White Adolescents’ explanations of racial-ethnic centrality
- Measurement Uncertainty in Racial and Ethnic Identification Among Adolescents of Mixed Ancestry: A Latent Variable Approach
- Women of Color Cultivating Virtual Social Capital: Surviving and Thriving
- From media propaganda to de-stigmatizing sex: A teen magazine by, for, and about girls
- Importance of Race and Ethnicity: An Exploration of Asian, Black, Latino, and Multiracial Adolescent Identity
- Growing Boys: Implementing a Boys' Empowerment Group in an Afterschool Program
While there are more efforts to teach media literacy to children and teens, youth are bombarded by messages across their screens, magazine pages, and the airwaves. How do adolescents interpret the news, propaganda, and entertainment that saturate their senses? Where do they see their real selves versus stereotypes and politicized populations? How do they respond—as consumers, citizens, students, and producers of their own media? And how can parents, families, educators, and clinicians take this important information to support tweens and teens? We aim to understand the answers to such questions.
Related research includes:
- Early Adolescent Social Technology Use and Parental Monitoring: Implications for Psychosocial and Behavioral Health
- Risk and Resilience of Media and Social Networking use in Vulnerable Adolescent Populations
- Media and Identity Study
- Promoting Public Awareness of the Road to Educational Equity for Girls of Color: A Multi-level Strategy
Related publications includes:
- Escaping from Worries or Facing Reality: A Survey Study of Adolescent Attitudes about Sexist and Homophobic Stereotypes in Mainstream US Media
- Media gangs of social resistance: Urban adolescents take back their images and their streets through media production
- From media propaganda to de-stigmatizing sex: A teen magazine by, for, and about girls
- Congregating to create for social change: Urban youth media production and sense of community
- The Importance of Audience and Agency for Representation: A Case Study of an Urban Youth Media Community.
- Urban Early Adolescent Narratives on Sexuality: Accidental and Intentional Influences of Family, Peers, and the Media
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