Dr. Karen Kochel's Lab

Lab Description 

In her Child Developmental Science lab, Dr. Kochel and her students posit and test questions about youth psychological, social, and school adjustment. We employ a developmental psychopathology framework, multi-informant survey methods, and the statistical modeling of longitudinal data to shed light on developmental patterns in middle childhood through emerging adulthood.

In recent years, Dr. Kochel has collaborated with undergraduates on three projects:

• The first, Project YEARS (Youth Emotional Adjustment and Relationships in School), is a school-based longitudinal study of third through fifth graders. We conducted it to better understand how psychological difficulties, and especially depressive symptoms, contribute to and/or result from various forms of peer relationship difficulties, including peer victimization.
• The second is a three-wave, longitudinal study of college students’ psychosocial and academic adjustment during COVID-19, with a particular focus on elucidating racial and other disparities in COVID’s impact.
• The third is the UR Belonging Project, which is funded by an “inclusive excellence” grant awarded to UR by Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The purpose of this project is to facilitate our understanding of UR student belonging and to identify (or develop) a classroom-based intervention designed to improve student belonging at UR.