CURRENT Projects
STAR (Supporting Thriving, Ambitious, & Resilient) Kids & Families
The goal of this project is to better understand risk and resilience factors in Latino/Hispanic and Black/African American children’s family, ethnic/racial/cultural, and peer environments, and how these factors relate to children’s development and outcomes. Dr. Williams is the Principal Investigator of this study. Our goal is to gain lots of great information that we can turn into programs that are valuable for children and parents!
Interested Caregivers: Are you Black/African American or Latino/Hispanic, over the age of 18 and speak English or Spanish? Do you have a child who is Black/African American or Latino/Hispanic between the ages of 5 to 11 years of age? If so, please email empoweryouthlab@gmail.com some days/times that you are available for a quick phone call that we can ask a few questions to check whether you meet the criteria to participate in the study and set up the interview. We are hoping to hear from you soon!
What Happens If You Decide to Participate: You will come to the Virginia Commonwealth University campus with your child. A member of our research team will interview you, and another member of the research team will interview your child at the same time in rooms that are side-by-side. The total time for the interviews will be about 1.5-2 hours. We also provide childcare for any additional children you will be bringing with you while you and your one child participate. As a thank you, you and your child will receive compensation for participating in the study.
PROJECT PLAY (PLAYING TO LEARN ABOUT YOU): PROMOTING ETHNIC-RACIAL IDENTITY IN YOUNG CHILDREN
The goal of this project is to better understand caregivers' and children’s thoughts about their ethnicity, race, and culture and how it relates to children’s development and caregivers’ parenting. We also hope to understand how caregivers and children talk about ethnicity, race, and culture during a play session. Dr. Williams is the Principal Investigator of this study. Our goal is to develop play interventions to discuss ethnicity, race, and culture!
Interested Caregivers: Are you a parent or caregiver over the age of 18 and speak English or Spanish? Do you have a child who is between the ages of 3 and 7 years old? If so, please email empoweryouthlab@gmail.com some days/times that you are available for a quick phone call so that we can ask a few questions to check whether you meet the criteria to participate in the study and set up the interview. We are hoping to hear from you soon!
What Happens If You Decide to Participate: You will come to the Virginia Commonwealth University campus with your child, or we will come to you at your home or a nearby community location. A member of our research team will interview you, and another member of the research team will interview your child, and then we will bring you both together for a 15-minute play session. The total time for the interviews will be about 2-2.5 hours. We also provide childcare for any additional children you will be bringing with you while you and your one child participate, and we provide transportation to campus if needed. As a thank you, you and your child will receive compensation for participating in the study.
This initiative is a collaboration across three universities and labs: EMPOWER Youth Lab, the Antiracism, Resistance, Identity, Socialization, and Equity (ARISE) Lab (Director: Annabelle Atkin), & the Cultural Developmental Science (CDS) Lab (Director: Keita Christophe). There are more than 7 million individuals in the U.S. who are Multiracial, and over half are under 18 years of age. Traditionally, Multiracial individuals’ experiences have been missing in much of psychological research. The goal of this initiative is to design and lead innovative research and interventions with Multiracial children and family cultural experiences and development. Our team has two goals:
1) Disseminate findings from existing projects with Multiracial youth via conferences, publications, & workshops.
2) Complete on-going and planned research studies with Multiracial children and families in elementary school, middle school and high school.
Multiracial Youth & Families
This interdisciplinary research project is a collaboration between the Virginia Commonwealth University Department of Psychology, the School of Education, the Metropolitan Educational Research Consortium, & community partner Village of Wisdom. Dr. Williams is a Co-Principal Investigator on the project.
Black and Latinx youth are disproportionately at-risk for educational inequities, and we hope that by centering the expertise of parents, involving educators, researchers, and middle schoolers, and leveraging interdisciplinary research, we will be able to create a culturally responsive curriculum for teachers that creates knowledge and identifies solutions for inequality. This project has two goals:
1) Create an integrative framework based on developmental science perspectives on youths’ ethnic-racial identity development and family ethnic-racial socialization and educational perspectives on funds of knowledge and culturally responsive education. Then, work with a core advisory team of family engagement specialists, culturally responsive trained educators, and Black and Latino parents and youth to refine the model.
2) Engage Black and Latino parents and middle schoolers and educational stakeholders in multiple focus groups to translate the integrative framework into a professional development curriculum for middle school teachers.
Merging Developmental and Educational Perspectives on Ethnic-Racial Identity and Socialization to Foster Culturally Responsive Education
University research teamSchool-based Health CenterS: Adolescent and Stakeholder Perspectives
This project is one of the Culture, Race, & Health Core initiatives. Dr. Williams is a collaborator on this project. School-based health centers have the potential to close disparities in healthcare faced by Black adolescent youth by providing accessible and affordable healthcare. School-based health centers can offer an array of services, including medical, mental health services, oral health care, and vision care. This study has two goals:
1) To describe whether a new local school-based health center is improving the health of Black students in high school.
2) To investigate barriers and facilitators that may be related to the acceptance and use of the school-based health center.
Disparities & experiences of ethnic & racial minoritized students before & during the pandemic
This initiative is led by the Minoritized Ethnic and Racial Students’ Experiences Working Group, which is composed of faculty, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, & undergraduate students. Dr. Williams is the former chair and current member of the group. The working group is examining data that were collected before the pandemic and is on-going as part of the Spit for Science Project. The working group’s goal is to investigate the unique experiences of ethnic and racial minoritized students during the COVID-19 pandemic.
