Undergraduate Research Explore Research in HDFS

Get to know the Adolescent Wellness Lab.

What we do:

• Focusing on teens, we conduct several different research studies to learn more about programs that lower stress and depression, increase healthy behaviors, and decrease adolescents’ likelihood of developing physical and mental health problems.

Key topics:

• Adolescent mental health
• Chronic disease prevention
• Health behaviors
• Social determinants of health

How you can help:

• Assisting with research assessments and intervention delivery
• Cleaning
• Creative flyer design
• Data entry
• Handling blood/saliva samples
• Preparing at-home kits for activity/sleep monitoring and processing data
• Recruitment

Get to know the CALMER Lab.

What we do:

• The Cultivating Awareness, Learning Mindfulness, and Examining Relationships (CALMER) Lab seeks to understand how the qualities of family relationships are related to adolescent biological and mental health.

Key topics:

• Adolescence
• Mental health
• Mindfulness
• Stress

How you can help:

• Assisting with the implementation of standardized lab tasks
• Data coding and data cleaning

Get to know the CHA Lab

What we do:

• The CHA Lab seeks to understand how individual differences in age-related cognitive trajectories are shaped by biopsychosocial factors—and how cognitive processes in turn influence mental health (dementia and depression risk) and longevity (mortality risk) in later adulthood.

Key topics:

• Advanced statistical methods
• Cognitive aging
• Successful aging

How you can help:

• Basic statistical analyses (with oversight/support provided)
• Data transcription and cleaning
• Literature search

Get to know CTRAC

What we do:

• CTRAC provides resilience-based trauma assessments and offers recommendations that focus on helping youth and families recognize, understand, and value their own strengths in responding to and healing from trauma.

Key topics:

• Child welfare
• Childhood trauma
• Developmental trauma
• Juvenile justice

How you can help:

• Recruiting and enrolling human subjects
• Potential tasks
  • Data collection
  • Poster presentations

Get to know the HEART Lab

What we do:

• Our lab group examines how individuals develop the abilities to regulate emotional experiences and cope with daily stressors and how these skills can be harnessed to promote healthy and successful aging.

Key topics:

• Aging
• Coping
• Culture
• Emotion regulation
• Health
• Resilience
• Stress
• Well-being

How you can help:

• Data cleaning
• Study documentation
• Literature searches and reviews
• Video coding

Get to know the Parent-Child Relationships and Well-Being Lab

What we do:

• The Parent-Child Relationships and Well-Being Lab seeks to enhance relationships, health, and well-being among children and families and to provide children and families with additional supports and resources to help them thrive

Key topics:

• Community-engaged research
• Early life adversity
• Parent-infant relationships
• Perinatal mental health
• Prevention and intervention
• Sleep
• Stress physiology

How you can help:

• Assisting with visit preparation
• Assisting with saliva sample pre-processing
• Coding parent-infant interactions
• Conducting literature searches
• Data entry and cleaning
• Organizing study files
• Supporting recruitment and retention of participants

Get to know the PEACE Lab

What we do:

• In the Promoting Equitable Access to Early Childhood Education (PEACE) lab, we take a systems approach to strengthen the reach and effectiveness of early childhood education for underserved and underrepresented populations.

Key topics:

• Child development and education
• Classroom quality
• Early care and education policy
• Family and educator well-being
• Equitable access
• School readiness

How you can help:

• Data collection
• Data cleaning and processing
• Dissemination of findings
• Interview coding
• Literature reviews
• Participant recruitment
• Video coding

Get to know the Prevention Research Center

What we do:

• The PRC is a campuswide, trans-disciplinary center committed to studying the development, implementation, and evaluation of effective and sustainable intervention programs that promote individual and family health and wellness throughout the lifespan

Key topics:

• Child-rearing practices
• Community intervention programs
• Guiding good choices
• Partners mentoring
• Risk/protective processes & resilience (individual, family, community)

How you can help:

• Data entry and report writing
• Possible data analyses

Get to know the RAMS ChAT Lab

What we do:

• The Research Using Advanced Methods to Study Children’s Achievement and Talk (RAMS ChAT) lab uses advanced quantitative methods to study children’s early development of school readiness skills and the role of environments

Key topics:

• Achievement
• Language development
• Language environments
• Quantitative methods

How you can help:

• Data analysis and (possible) collection
• Paper or presentation preparation
• Potentially working with community partners

Get to know the Rural and Agricultural Mental Health and Substance Use (RAMS) Lab

What we do:

• The RAMS Lab focuses on reducing behavioral health disparities in rural and agricultural communities by examining the influences of individual, family, community, and macro-level risk and protective processes on mental and behavioral health outcomes and evaluating behavioral health promotion interventions and initiatives in partnership with the Colorado AgrAbility Project.

Key topics:

• Adolescence
• Mental health
• Substance use
• Rural communities
• Rural health disparities
• Young adulthood

How you can help:

• Literature reviews
• Survey data entry and cleaning
• Outreach and intervention efforts
• Participant recruitment
• Qualitative data coding and thematic analysis

Get to know Dr. Susan Hepburn

What we do:

• In the Strengthening Autism Identification Across the Lifespan (SAIL) Lab, we seek to improve access to timely identification and school-based interventions for youth with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities and their families.

Key topics:

• Autism
• College supports
• Emerging adults
• Family-focused intervention
• Lifespan
• Neurodiversity-affirming practices
• Underserved individuals and communities

How you can help:

1. Help co-design an executive function intervention for college students by participating in task force meetings, building awareness of the study, conducting and documenting stakeholder interviews, observational coding (live and via video), literature reviews, interview coding, and dissemination of findings
2. Help to develop guidance for parents of minimally verbal girls who are going through puberty by:
   1. Recruiting participants
   2. Filming lab visits
   3. Coding behaviors
   4. Scoring assessments
   5. Entering data; and
   6. Disseminating findings
3. Participate in campus and community outreach events

Get to know the TECH Lab

What we do:

• The Teens Engaging in Change for Health (TECH) Research Lab is dedicated to improving adolescent health outcomes by understanding and promoting health behavior change

Key topics:

• Child and adolescent health
• Digital health equity
• Health behaviors (physical activity, sleep)
• Real-world data collection
• Technology and access

How you can help:

• Creating study materials
• Data entry, cleaning, and processing (wearables, surveys)
• Literature reviews
• Presenting research findings
• Supporting recruitment, outreach, and intervention efforts