Social Science Research Institute

Supporting Novel Interdisciplinary Research to Address Critical Human and Social Problems at Penn State

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Gone are the days when students with disabilities were placed in a separate classroom, or even in a completely different part of the school. These students often sit alongside their traditional student peers for at least part of the day, with the help of individualized education programs (IEPs).

IEPs are considered the main drivers in special education and the mechanism through which these students receive their education to meet his or her individual learning needs, however there are challenges to implementing them in inclusive settings. A Penn State researcher is examining the role of IEPs for students with specific learning disabilities in general education settings

In this study, published recently in the journal Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Laura Bray, assistant professor of education, explored how educators wrote, used, and conceptualized the role of IEPs for students with specific learning disabilities within inclusive general education settings. “IEPs are supposed to be standards-based and tailored to the student’s needs. We wanted to understand how teachers draw from IEPs and utilize them in their teaching.”

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Sex trafficking is one of the world’s most prevalent and profitable criminal enterprises, with over 100,000 annual cases involving children under the age of 18 in the U.S. each year. However, the number of these cases are vastly under reported, especially in rural areas. A new project being undertaken by faculty members at Penn State aims to examine the incident rates and risk factors for commercial sexual exploitation of children in Pennsylvania.

According to project researcher Sheridan Miyamoto, assistant professor in the College of Nursing, the one-year project will provide evidence on the extent of commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) in the state and differences in risk factors among rural and urban victims. “There is very little research available on CSEC nationally, and even less available in rural areas, primarily because many victims are still incorrectly prosecuted for prostitution and there is no tracking system in place to help us understand how large the problem is.”

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Older adults rely on family for companionship and help with all sorts of tasks as they confront the frailties of old age. But what about older adults who have no living family members? One Penn State researcher is exploring the kinless population of older adults in the U.S. and how it is expected to change in the coming years.

Ashton Verdery, assistant professor of sociology and demography and affiliate of the Population Research Institute and the Institute for CyberScience at Penn State, is looking into emerging evidence that white older Americans may have more family available than their Black counterparts, and he suggests this gap will continue to widen in the coming decades. His work was recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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A Penn State researcher and her collaborator found that physical abuse was associated with decreases in children’s cognitive performance, while non-abusive forms of physical punishment were independently associated with reduced school engagement and increased peer isolation.

Sarah Font, assistant professor of sociology and co-funded faculty member of the Child Maltreatment Solutions Network, and Jamie Cage, assistant professor in Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Social Work, found that children’s performances and engagement in the classroom are significantly influenced by their exposure to mild, harsh and abusive physical punishment in the home. Their study was recently published in Child Abuse and Neglect.

While corporal punishment and physical abuse have been linked with reduced cognitive development and academic achievement in children previously, Font’s study is one of the few that simultaneously examines abusive and non-abusive physical punishment as reported by both children and caregivers.

Even if physical punishment does not result in serious physical injury, children may experience fear and distress, and this stress has been found to negatively impact brain structure, development and overall well-being.

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Deaths resulting from prescription drug overdoses have increased more than seven-fold over the last several decades, and public health officials are calling the epidemic the worst drug crisis in American history.

Prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMP) are being implemented in an increasing number of states to address their misuse, and a team of Penn State researchers, including Young Hee Nam, Yunfeng Shi, Dennis Shea and John Moran, have been investigating their impact.

According to Yunfeng Shi, assistant professor of health policy and administration at Penn State, inappropriate drug use not only affects health outcomes, but can also cause increases in waste and societal costs. “More and more, we are seeing states monitoring prescription drug use via statewide databases that collect data on the prescribing, dispensing and purchasing of prescription drugs.”

These programs use patient databases to identify inappropriate patient behavior (such as doctor shopping), facilitate drug treatment, and inform public health initiatives designed to combat the misuse of prescription drugs, especially opioids.

The researchers looked at the impact of these programs on drug overdose mortality rates across all drug categories from 1999 to 2014, and each of the categories separately from 1999 to 2010, using data from the US Census Bureau and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They examined 34 states that began operating PDMPs in 2002 or later and found that prescription drug monitoring programs had no appreciable impact on drug overdose mortality rates. Moreover, PDMPs may actually have contributed to increases in mortality rates from the use of illicit drugs and other (unidentified) drugs. These counterintuitive effects were concentrated in states with PDMPs operating for five or more years.

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In our lifetime, we’ve seen an incredible surge in communications technology, leading to tremendous changes in how we connect with one another. Ninety-one percent of American adults own a cell phone, and teens spend an average of nine hours a day using social media ranging from Facebook to music.

To discuss the implications of increases in technology use on relationships and family dynamics, the 2017 National Symposium on Family Issues presents “Families and Technology,” which will be held Oct. 23-24 at the Nittany Lion Inn.

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While the five senses help us to navigate through our world, how we perceive the faces we see is critical to becoming successful socially, says a Penn State researcher.

Suzy Scherf, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience, is heading up a five-year project being funded by a $3.5 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health. Scherf and her research team will investigate adolescent-specific changes in face processing before, during, and after pubertal development.

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A remarkable, but lesser-known aspect of the United States Military is its efforts, programs, and research into the detection and prevention of child abuse in military families.

Penn State’s sixth annual Child Maltreatment Solutions Network conference, “Scientific Synergy & Innovation from Military Family & Child Welfare Contexts,” will be held in partnership with the Clearinghouse for Military Family Readiness, Sept. 27 to 28, in the Nittany Lion Inn on the University Park campus. This event promotes the collaboration of researchers, policy analysts and practice professionals to discuss and determine how to take military family research and programs and use them broadly.

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Despite decades of educational reform and legal efforts, many U.S. schools are experiencing increasing segregation, with 16 percent of public schools serving both minority and high poverty students. A Supreme Court decision a decade ago eliminated the use of certain types of district policies that had been voluntarily adopted by some school districts to address rising segregation. Now, a Penn State researcher is looking at how student assignment policies may be impacting the diversity of public schools.

According to Erica Frankenberg, associate professor of education and demography and co-director of the Center for Education and Civil Rights at Penn State, the new generation of school choice policies adopted in response to legal decisions may actually be increasing school inequalities, despite their goals of maintaining integrated schools.

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Over 20 percent of older adults suffer from subjective memory impairment, where a person reports having trouble remembering things with no evidence of actual memory loss. Now Penn State researchers are looking into the growing evidence that subjective memory impairment can lead to Alzheimer’s disease in some older adults.

Principal investigator Nikki Hill, assistant professor of nursing, aims to discover how poor self-perceptions of memory, depression, anxiety, and declines in activity are related to actual memory decline over time. As part of a four-year project being funded by the National Institute on Aging, Hill, along with Jacqueline Mogle, assistant clinical professor of nursing, and Martin Sliwinski, professor of human development and family studies, will also identify individual characteristics that contribute to these relationships in hopes of developing better early screening and personalized intervention options for Alzheimer’s disease.

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SSRI Associate Director Josh Smyth recently co-hosted and spoke at a conference to accompany the launch of the Creatively Connected Online Film Festival in New York City.

The conference addressed the impact of loneliness as a public health concern by featuring expert panel presentations on loneliness and isolation in several particularly vulnerable populations — older adults and caregivers, veterans and their families and employees in the modern workplace. Smyth, who is also a distinguished professor of biobehavioral health and medicine, gave an expert overview on what loneliness is and why people should care.

An evening celebration followed, highlighting several of the award-winning films featured in the festival. The films are freely available online and are categorized by ‘Theater’ according to a particular aspect of loneliness and isolation. Categories include “Older Adults and Caregivers”, “Veterans and Their Families”, “In the Minority and On the Margin”, “Day by Day” and “Major Illness & Disability”, allowing viewers to pick and click through a wide range of documentaries, dramas, and animations.

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Animals have been used in therapy for decades to assist with a person’s physical, emotional and social well-being to reduce anxiety and facilitate healing. Until recently, however, there has been little scientific evidence to show the effectiveness of animals in these treatments.

Penn State researchers were recently awarded a Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development grant to learn more about animal-assisted therapy in child-abuse situations.

Principal investigator Brian Allen, a co-funded faculty member at Penn State’s Child Maltreatment Solutions Network and assistant professor of pediatrics and psychiatry, and his team will be analyzing the effectiveness of integrating animals into Trauma-Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT).

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Roughly 2 million children experience maltreatment each year in the United States and face the possibility of a lifetime of mental, emotional, behavioral and physical health difficulties. With more than $124 billion spent in the U.S. on child maltreatment-related costs, the importance of mitigating damaging outcomes for victims cannot be overstated. There is a critical need for new research to identify health and developmental solutions, mobilize public investment in child maltreatment prevention and treatment, accelerate science to practice, and spark dynamic system-wide change.

Recognizing this importance, The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the NICHD, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently completed a competitive process to fund for the first time ever, an academic institution to function as a “Capstone.” Penn State has been selected based on scientific merit to establish the Center for Healthy Children. The award of $7.7 million will support the center as a national resource for child maltreatment research and training. To further this effort, Penn State has committed $3.4 million in funds, to total more than $11 million.

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The benefits of obtaining a college degree are higher than ever in the current economy, as researchers estimate that by the year 2020, 65 percent of all jobs will require postsecondary education.

While increasing college enrollment and graduate rates is a national priority, targeting the college behaviors of rural students are particularly important, according to Soo-yong Byun, associate professor of educational theory and policy and Social Sciences Research Institute co-funded faculty. “Almost 10 million students in America go to public schools in rural areas, but rural students are vastly underrepresented in education research. Few studies have examined the college trajectories of rural youth at a time when the country has witnessed a heightened emphasis on increasing college graduation rates.”

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Diversity in schools is important for students’ experiences and outcomes in schools and beyond, reducing prejudices and ensuring the likelihood of living and working in integrated environments as adults. Penn State researchers are exploring how school choice is affecting racial composition and segregation in Pennsylvania schools.

According to lead researcher Erica Frankenberg, associate professor of education and Population Research Institute associate at Penn State, this is one of the first studies to explore how charter schools could be affecting the racial composition of public schools.

“It is critical to assess how student movement from charter schools affects school segregation during this time of persisting neighborhood segregation, and to see what choices students and parents make when or if more integrative options exist," said Frankenberg.

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While it has long been known that maltreatment can affect a child’s psychological development, new Penn State research indicates that the stress of abuse can impact the physical growth and maturation of adolescents as well.

Jennie Noll, director of the Child Maltreatment Solutions Network and professor of human development and family studies, and Idan Shalev, assistant professor of biobehavioral health, found that young girls who are exposed to childhood sexual abuse are likely to physically mature and hit puberty at rates 8 to twelve months earlier than their non-abused peers. Their results were published recently in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

“Though a year’s difference may seem trivial in the grand scheme of a life, this accelerated maturation has been linked to concerning consequences, including behavioral and mental health problems and reproductive cancers,” said Noll.

The body is timed so that physical and developmental changes occur in tandem, assuring that as a child physically changes, they have adequate psychological growth to cope with mature contexts. “High-stress situations, such as childhood sexual abuse, can lead to increased stress hormones that jump-start puberty ahead of its standard biological timeline,” Noll explained. “When physical maturation surpasses psychosocial growth in this way, the mismatch in timing is known as maladaptation.”

In the past, there have been studies loosely linking sexual abuse to maladaptation and accelerated maturation, but the longitudinal work completed by Noll and her team has been the most conclusive and in-depth to date, beginning in 1987 and following subjects throughout each stage of puberty.

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When children begin kindergarten, they are faced with a new set of demands and expectations ­— for both behavior and learning. For children who are struggling in these areas, quality early intervention programs are crucial.

One early intervention program, Head Start, is a federally-funded program that began in the 1960s as a program for low-income families. The effectiveness of Head Start in preparing children for elementary school is currently being debated, but in Pennsylvania, the program has benefited from several Penn State initiatives.

Head Start REDI (research-based, developmentally informed), began in 2002 as a prevention trial, headed by Karen Bierman, Evan Pugh Professor of Psychology and Human Development and Family Studies and director of the Child Study Center.

Funded by Eunice Kennedy National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) grants, Head Start REDI is delivered by teachers and integrated into their classrooms. “The REDI program includes curriculum-based lessons, center-based extension activities and professional development for teachers designed to enhance the impact of Head Start on child school readiness,” said Bierman. “The program develops both language and literacy skills, as well as social-emotional skills.”

Research shows the REDI program has been very successful in its synergy — Bierman and her team have documented several improvements in teaching quality in REDI classrooms, including enhanced teacher language use, instructional support, and emotion coaching. “Children who received REDI showed improved outcomes on measures of vocabulary, emergent literacy skills, social competence and learning engagement, and reduced aggression at the end of the Head Start year. More importantly, sustained benefits were documented into kindergarten and through third grade,” Bierman reported.