Research at Adler

Blogging over the past number of months has been... well... confined to Twitter to be perfectly honest. Positive progress at Adler continues at a breakneck rate in all areas, from recruitment to new degree development, through curriculum evolution, and more. A particular point of pride for me is the great advances Adler has made in laying the groundwork to be considered a hub of significant applied psychological research. This is considerably more than the university model of "recruit some students and run an experiment to prove a hypothesis." We're talking about research that has the potential to affect real lives, real families, and real communities, potentially influence public policy, and certainly inform psychological care. We've initiated critical, qualitative inquiry and research design as a mandatory first-year course (that I personally teach with great enjoyment because of our terrific students!), and augmented it with parallel quantitative methods training.

Here are some examples, grouped by broad theme, of student research that has recently been approved by Adler's Research Review (Ethics) Committee:

On Psychology and Newcomers:

• Experiences with Counselling – For Individuals within the South Asian Community. 
• The Difference Between Newcomers Who Seek Help As Opposed to Who Don’t in Terms of Stigma Towards Mental Health. 
• Psychological Effects affiliated with systemic barriers experienced by newcomer women in Toronto. 

On Family Connections and Dynamics:

• Sexual offender’s perceptions on early life experiences: role, gender and forms of attachment between mother and father. 
• A Glance at Attachment bonding in families with children with Disruptive Behaviours.
• The effect of family ties on the resilience of homeless youth.
• Patriarchal versus Matriarchal Dominant Households, and the Influence on Behavioural and Moral Mindset of Offspring.
• Self-Help: Impact and Efficacy on Marital Discord.
• How do prosocial video games influence the behaviour, family dynamics and interpersonal relationships of a child with behaviour issues?
• Parental perception of iPad use in preschoolers.

 And, simply interesting and important:

• A qualitative analysis on the experience of pregnancy loss in women after 24 weeks gestation.
• The Experience of Alzheimer’s Disease: Through the Caregiver.
• The Communication of Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus to Children: A Pilot Study.
• Investigating the effects of gender and online support for individuals experiencing anxiety.
• Affective, anxiety, and perfectionistic response to positive and negative feedback: A qualitative study of gender, interpersonal, and societal factors in individuals with perfectionism.

I am really looking forward to reading the results of these interesting research projects, and eagerly anticipating Adler's (future) first, formal, research conference.