DePTh Lab

We focus on understanding the nature, development, and relative importance of self-regulation for promoting positive development across these contexts and for individuals of different ages. Through research collaborations both within the U.S. and across the globe, we seek to optimize the validity of our research and ensure that our measures and findings are relevant to youth’s lived experiences.

We focus primarily on quantitative techniques that provide unique and meaningful insight into the nature of development but supplement these techniques with qualitative methods when relevant. Our quantitative focus includes traditional methods as well as more-advanced models that assess the complex ways individuals and their contexts co-create development.

We specialize in

Youth development

• Theoretical models of positive youth development
  • Students are especially encouraged to refine theories and models of positive youth development in ways that acknowledge new and exciting dimensions. Current examples include work on language brokering and critical consciousness.
• Contextually sensitive measures of positive youth development
• The nature and development of self-regulation across the life span

Quantitative methods

• Factor analysis
• Scale development/adaptation
• Structural equation modeling
• Multilevel modeling, including multilevel regression and multilevel structural equation modeling
• Longitudinal data analysis
• Causal inference
• Mixture models
• Traditional and dynamic systems models for intensive repeated measures data