Wendy Hadley
University of Oregon, OR·Psychology
Early adolescence, roughly ages 11 to 14, is when many mental health problems first appear. Middle schools reach nearly every young person at this age, so they are a natural place to teach skills that may prevent more serious problems later.
- Fields
Psychology
Public Health & Epidemiology
Education Research
- Topics
emotion regulation
adolescent mental health
early adolescence
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Mar 2030
What they work on
- Develop the classroom and teacher components of iTRAC+, a digital emotion regulation program for middle schoolers, together with an expert panel and community partners, and identify ways to strengthen teacher and school engagement.
- Assess whether iTRAC+ is acceptable and feasible in four middle school classrooms, and use the results to refine teacher training materials, teacher recruitment plans and the classroom delivery schedule.
- Randomize 46 classrooms in four middle schools to iTRAC+ or an attention control condition, and compare emotion regulation abilities in students and teachers before the program and 4 months after it.
- Identify barriers to and supports for school-based delivery of iTRAC+ using the ACCESS Center implementation framework, to prepare a fully powered implementation trial.
More about the research
One skill stands out: emotion regulation, the set of processes people use to manage their feelings and how they express them in order to reach their goals. Middle schoolers who use more of these strategies tend to be protected against negative social effects and poorer mental health. Yet existing school social emotional learning programs rarely measure emotion regulation or mental health beyond conduct problems. They often give teachers little training, and they can demand a lot of time and resources.
Why it matters
Mental health problems often begin in middle school. A brief, digitally delivered emotion regulation program that teachers can support during the school day could help schools prevent these problems and improve school functioning, without the heavy time and resource demands of many current programs. Students aged 11–14, their teachers and school systems could benefit if iTRAC+ proves feasible and effective.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Lauren Haack
University of California-San Francisco, CA·Psychology
Test whether students in schools using CLS-A-FUERTE, a school clinician training and ADHD/ODD intervention program, improve more in parent- and teacher-rated symptoms than students receiving usual services, in a cluster randomized trial across 40 Mexican schools.
Jamie M Ostrov
University at Buffalo, NY·Psychology
Test whether a teacher-implemented, coached version of the Early Childhood Friendship Project reduces aggression and peer victimization and increases prosocial behavior, in a randomized trial of 600 children in 30 preschool classrooms.
Sara McDaniel
University of Alabama, AL·Education Research
Compare Coping Power with Coping Power+, which adds enhanced perspective-taking content, for reducing aggression and school disengagement among middle schoolers with high externalizing behavior in a randomized trial.
The school
University of Oregon: 14 labs on PI Pages, $175M a year on research, 219 research doctorates a year.
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