Overview
Research in my lab concerns the means by which adolescents and emerging adults manage pursuit of their goals through self-regulation. We take a broad view of self-regulation, accounting for the separate and interactive influences of personality, environment (e.g., home, school, neighborhood), cognition and emotion, and social influences on the many facets of goal management. Although we occasionally study these influences in controlled laboratory experiments, our preference is to study the pursuit of longer-term, personally meaningful goals “in the wild.” Much of our work is longitudinal and involves repeated assessments focused on the pursuit of specific goals over time. Some studies span years and involve data collection once or twice per year. Others span weeks and involve intensive repeated assessments, sometimes several times per day. We use these rich data to model the means by which people manage real goals in the course of everyday life.
In conjunction with this work, we spend considerable time and effort on developing and refining means of measuring or observing the many factors at play in self-regulation. In addition to developing self-report measures of self-control and grit and measures of the processes we expect to wax and wane over time in the course of goal pursuit, we are working on unobtrusive approaches to tracking goal pursuit and progress through mobile phones and wearable devices.
Current Appointments & Affiliations
Recent Publications
A scoping review of naturalistic assessments of self-control
Journal Article Personality and Individual Differences · July 1, 2025 Self-control has received considerable attention across fields. A substantially smaller portion of the literature has focused on the availability of self-control in the moment. Our interest is a small body of research in which self-control capacity is asse ... Full text CiteHair Cortisol Concentrations in the Prediction of Early Substance Use Engagement in Youth.
Journal Article Subst Use Misuse · 2025 OBJECTIVE: Understanding factors associated with early onset of substance use is critical as using alcohol or drugs at a young age is a strong predictor of later substance dependency. Experiencing stressful life events is associated with increased risk for ... Full text Link to item CiteAdolescent reports of subjective socioeconomic status: An adequate alternative to parent-reported objective and subjective socioeconomic status?
Journal Article PloS one · January 2025 Socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with well-being outcomes across studies; however, there is wide variation in its measurement, particularly in adolescence. One key difference in measures of SES concerns whether participants relay objective informat ... Full text CiteRecent Grants
Real-Time and Randomized Tests of Social Media and Mental Health Links in Early Adolescence
ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by University of California - Irvine · 2024 - 2029NCCU Duke - Substance Use Research & Education (ND-SURE)
ResearchMentor · Awarded by North Carolina Central University · 2024 - 2029Adapting the ESTEEM intervention to improve mental health and PrEP engagement among gay and bisexual men in Guatemala
ResearchAdvisor · Awarded by National Institutes of Health · 2024 - 2029View All Grants