Posts

Five Ways to Improve How We Measure Young People’s Well-Being

By Kathryn L.S. Pettit, Hannah Daly, and Amelia Coffey, Reprinted from the Urban Institute Young people need resources and support to thrive both during adolescence and into adulthood. To work toward this, we need to be able to measure, track, and determine indicators that represent all aspects of well-being. Policymakers, funders, researchers, advocates, and practitioners […]

The golden years glow: Older adults draw more positivity from prosocial behavior

Bjälkebring, P., Västfjäll, D., Dickert, S., & Slovic, P. (2019). Greater emotional gain from giving in older adults: Age-related positivity bias in charitable giving. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1-8. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00846. Summarized by Justin Preston Introduction It has been well-demonstrated that prosocial behavior has positive benefits for both the recipient and the giver. From receiving […]

Mentors helping students prepare for college: More than just making the grade

Woods, C. & Preciado, M. (2016). Student–Mentor Relationships and Students’ College Attitudes. Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk (JESPAR), 21(2), 90-103. DOI: 10.1080/10824669.2015.1127767 Summarized by Justin Preston   Introduction Research has demonstrated that low-income high school students are less likely to plan for college, apply to selective colleges and universities, and complete a […]

Social media survey has implications for mentoring

The American Psychological Association (APA) released a report that explores the impact of technology and communication on stress levels in the United States. In addition to the insight the report provides on broader trends in our relationships with technology, social media, and work, there are some important takeaway lessons for mentoring programs and mentors. While […]

Youth Engaged in Research: Why Young Investigators Are Important

By Shereen El Mallah, Reprinted from Youth-NEX In a recent Q&A I described what participatory research is, how it is important, and why more researchers should be using it. In this second publication of the series, let’s examine why engaging youth in participatory research can change the existing researcher-subject power dynamic as well as amplify […]

WT Grant Foundation: Learning Across Contexts: Bringing Together Research on Research Use and Implementation Science

By Lauren Supplee, Allison Metz, and Annette Boaz, reprinted from the William T. Grant Foundation Recent publications by implementation researchers underscore promising new directions in implementation science while also acknowledging potential challenges for the field to address in the years ahead (Beidas et al., 2022; Metz et al., 2022).12 At the same time, scholars in […]

WT Grant Foundation: Building Evidence Systems to Integrate Implementation Research and Practice in Education

By Norma Ming, reprinted from the William T. Grant Foundation Amid persistent and expanding inequities in education, the urgency of improving practice likewise grows, along with demands for better research use (ESSA, 2015).1 As a field, we need to improve not just the quality of research evidence (Ming & Goldenberg, 2021), but also the quality […]

The messenger matters: New research shows peers better than teachers at academic motivation

Posted by Andy Henion “Why do I have to learn this?” is a common question among young adults. New research suggests an answer from their peers has more weight than one from their teachers. University students who received a rationale for why learning is important from people similar to them—in this case actors posing as young professionals—wrote […]

WT Grant Foundation: Reducing Educational Inequality After the COVID-19 Pandemic

By Adam Gamoran and Richard J. Murnane, reprinted from the William T. Grant Foundation When President Barack Obama declared in December 2013 that the stifling combination of growing inequality and lack of upward mobility constituted “the defining challenge of our time,” he pointed to education as a pathway to economic opportunity (Obama, 2013).1 Nevertheless, the […]

Charting the Community Psychology Landscape: A New Ranking System for Research Output

Reference: Ruesink, L., & Jason, L. A. (2023). Ranking the community psychology research output of institutions and authors: A new system of evaluating the field. Journal of Community Psychology. Summarized by Ellen Parry Luff About the Study: Researchers use various research methods to explore the contributions of the community psychology field. They use genealogical methods […]