PhD Counseling Psychology Research

Research

Research from faculty in the Counseling Psychology program is conducted in laboratories at New York University and the schools, hospitals, neighborhoods, and community settings in New York. Additionally, international research is a cornerstone of the program, with faculty and students engaged in studying developmental processes and contextual influences across countries such as China, Argentina, Denmark, and Korea. We work closely with our affiliated global faculty at NYU Shanghai and NYU Abu Dhabi campuses.

Student Research

Students participate in the research team of a faculty member of the Counseling Psychology Program (or another Applied Psychology faculty, by program approval), beginning the first semester of the first year. Students are expected to allocate half of their time (at least 20 hours per week) to this research team throughout their graduate career. Students are free to transition to another team or collaborate with other research labs and/or research centers during their doctoral training. It is expected that student research experience will entail research productivity, including papers, grant writing, presentations, and publications.

Areas of Research Focus:

Women and depression; immigrant women; cross-cultural research; feminist epistemology and social action
HIV prevention and care, LGBT and Latinx mental health, personality disorders, risk assessment, and intersectional multicultural competency.
Development of prevention, intervention, and service delivery models for youth at risk for or affected with disruptive behavior disorders
Development of, and social response to violence and antisocial behavior, focusing on psychopathology, criminal justice systems response, and the role of gender and adolescence
Immigration, community contexts, individual differences, and racial minority status and the mental health of Asian American individuals and families
Development through work and relationships in peoples’ live,
Multicultural assessment and counselor training; qualitative research methods; intelligence testing with diverse populations
Psychosocial and cultural predictors of health among ethnic minority cancer survivors; development of culturally-sensitive psychosocial interventions; individual differences in emotion regulation and negative self-reflection
LGBTQI psychology (including homonegative microaggressions) and psychological assessment.

Affiliated Research Centers and Institutes

CREATE

The Consortium for Research and Evaluation of Advanced Technologies in Education (CREATE) engages in research on the design, critique, and evaluation of wide-ranging advanced digital technologies for learning. Projects housed in the consortium involve interdisciplinary teams of scholars and developers who bridge basic and applied research, development, and evaluation.

IHDSC

The Institute of Human Development and Social Change (IHDSC)'s mission is to stimulate interdisciplinary research and influence social policy on children, youth, families, and communities in the context of a rapidly changing social world.

Metro Center

The Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools (Metro Center) promotes equity and opportunity in education through engaged science work: applied research, program evaluation, policy analysis, community engagement, and professional assistance to educational, governmental, and community agencies serving vulnerable populations.

Affiliated Research Labs/Projects

Chinese Families Lab (CFL)

The project draws from both the Nanjing Adolescent and Nanjing MetroBaby study, which are longitudinal, mix-methods studies with over 1100 Chinese families and children starting at 7th grade for the adolescent study and birth for the MetroBaby study. The project is led by Dr. Niobe Way, Dr. Hirokazu Yoshikawa, Dr. Sumie Okazaki, and Dr. Sebastian Cherng from NYU, and is a collaboration across NYU, NYU-Shanghai, NYU-Abu Dhabi, University of Pennsylvania, and Southeast University in China. We are interested in how the changing social, economic, and cultural context influences Chinese parents' parenting practices and children’s development. The project has finished a ten-year follow-up from the MetroBaby project in 2016. Ongoing research papers under development include examining Chinese mothers’ and fathers gender socialization, adolescents' gender beliefs and their academic achievements, gender beliefs and friendship quality, parents' workplace climate and families' mental health, etc.

The Culture, Emotion, and Health Lab (CEH)

CEH is directed by William Tsai, Ph.D. The lab studies how people regulate their emotions, cope with stress, and how these processes lead to health and well-being. We focus our research questions on how cultural tendencies and values can shape the development and use of these processes. Our work is interdisciplinary, spanning across social, clinical, and health psychology. Recently, we have begun a line of research with ethnic minority cancer survivors, which is a population that experiences significant cancer health disparities. We are interested in applying cultural psychology theories with psychosocial interventions to overcome cultural barriers to reduce the undue burden of cancer experienced by ethnic minority cancer survivors.

The Families and Children Experiencing Success (FACES) Lab

FACES is directed by Anil Chacko, Ph.D. The lab was developed to serve the families of youth exhibiting disruptive behavior disorders such as Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Oppositional-Defiant Disorder, and other conduct disorders. Its research aims to understand how to develop the most effective prevention, intervention, and service models for youth with disruptive behavior disorders and related conditions, or those at high risk for developing them.

The Researching Inequity in Society Ecologically (RISE)

RISE is directed by Erin Godfrey, Ph.D., and Shabnam Javdani, Ph.D. The team’s research and activities serve traditionally marginalized populations, focusing on health and mental health disparities in women and youth who are involved, or at risk of involvement, with the justice system. As such, the RISE Team takes a contextual, multi-level and interdisciplinary approach to systems change and implementing evidence-based practices promoting health and well-being, working closely with community partners to bridge the gap between research and practice.