Dear CRESP Community:
We hope that you and your loved ones are safe and doing well. As we enter the fall, we share in a spirit of solemn gratitude, and understand that we continue to face uncertainty and hardship in a time of significant external stressors. Thank you for your ongoing commitments to this work, and for your support of CRESP and the University of Delaware. We will work through this together and we remain dedicated to continuing our mission to improve outcomes for children, youth, adults and families. If we can be of any assistance to our colleagues during this time, please feel free to contact us (cresp-directors@udel.edu).
~ CRESP Directors
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Findings from the University Community Engagement Survey
CRESP recently completed its evaluation of the University of Delaware’s Community Engagement Initiative (CEI)! We assessed community engagement as perceived by CEI stakeholders: faculty and staff, students, and the communities with whom the University is engaged. Reports, survey tools, and other key information related to this activity can be found here: http://www.cresp.udel.edu/1214-2/
Understanding the Impact of Double-up Food Bucks and similar strategies at Farmer’s Markets
The results of three studies conducted in conjunction with Wholesome Wave, a national expert in voucher program operations at farmers’ markets, are complete and available on our website. Findings show that vouchers significantly increase sales at farmer's market, and increase fruit and vegetable consumption as well, particularly for those who use the vouchers when they are received. The reports further find that the more a voucher is worth the greater its impact, though $1 and $2 vouchers show particular benefit.
For more information click here.
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Delaware Food Research Network (DEFRN)
The Delaware Food Research Network (DEFRN) brings together a group of individuals, including researchers, policymakers, and advocates, dedicated to many facets of improving food and nutrition for Delawareans. The Network believes that through research, members have the ability to improve the related food systems both within and beyond the state’s borders. Meeting quarterly to foster interdisciplinary collaboration and idea-sharing, the Network develops strategies to maximize research potential, engages in regular cross-sector dialog, and converses with stakeholders to better understand needs and solutions. To join DEFN please contact Nicole Kennedy at (kennedyn@udel.edu). Read more about the project here.
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Health Promotion and Disease Prevention (HPDP) Study Examines Health, Economic, Educational Outcomes and Other Issues Impacting Black girls living in Delaware
The purpose of the HPDP study is to gather timely information about lived experiences, challenges, survival strategies, and resources utilized by Black girls in Delaware. It is the intent of The National Coalition of 100 Black Women, Delaware Chapter, that data and recommendations inform their community advocacy agenda, public policy, funding resources, human service delivery options, and further research in the State of Delaware about Black girls.
The study is considering girls’ experiences and current issues related to self-esteem, identity, resilience, health, economic well-being, and educational outcomes. The response to this collaborative effort has been strong, and has logged over 700 responses from girls across the state, and heard the viewpoints of teens through 5 focus groups. The work, led by professor Dr. Tia Barnes with support from Dr. Katrina Morrison and Shameeka Jelenewicz, was recently featured by UDaily. Read more about the project here.
Spread the word about the Delaware Black Girl Project and watch for the findings to come.
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CRESP Presentations and Workshops
(October 25-28, 2020)
Dr. Allison Karpyn and Kathleen McCallops, Tara Tracy, and CRESP undergraduate research assistant, Henry Wolgast will deliver their presentation entitled, "Outcomes from an Institution-Wide Community Engagement Framework: Comparing Perspectives Across Student, Faculty, and Community Partners ," at the 2020 Assessment Institute in Indianapolis.
(October 27-30, 2020)
Mary Culnane and Dr. Giancola
will present at the conference of the
Their session is, "Looking for impacts on health priorities: A challenge for translational research," the presentation will detail, The Clinical and Translational Research programs funded through NIGMS in IDeA. States are asked to address “health conditions that affect the medically under-served and/or that
are prevalent among populations in IDeA states.” Are you registered for the AEA? The AEA conference asks "How will you let your light shine?" Let us know at the AEA and all of 2020!
(October 24 -28, 2020)
Dr. Allison Karpyn will also present, "Healthy default beverages in kids’ meals: Evaluating policy implementation and impact in California and Delaware ,” at the American Public Health Association (APHA) annual conference virtually this year.
(Upcoming 2021)
Dr. Gail Headley will present at
Gail plan's to help the Mixed Method Research Special Interest Group leadership put together a "How to Convey the Methodology of Mixed Methods Research in Conference Proposals: Advice from Mixed Methods Scholars" session.
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CRESP Collaborations
Center for Research in Education and Social Policy (CRESP) has partnered with The Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) of the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) to develop free teaching materials about OPRE research that can be used by higher education faculty when teaching about programs and policies related to children and families.
CRESP is also involved in disseminating the survey and amplifying OPRE’s social media posts. OPRE studies programs administered by the ACF and the populations they serve through rigorous research and evaluation projects. These include evaluations of existing programs, evaluations of innovative approaches to help low-income children and families, and research syntheses.
The survey being disseminated is an opportunity for faculty in higher education to help understand the content and format of teaching materials that are appropriate and useful in college courses. The feedback through this survey will guide OPRE toward developing useful materials for higher education settings. As an added bonus, at the end of the survey, those who complete the survey will receive a customized list of OPRE resources.
The survey will be open until 7/31/22, please help us amplify the resources available from OPRE and forward this information to your colleagues!
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How do Education Researchers move their Research into the Hands of Educators?
The Center for Research Use in Education (CRUE) is surveying education researchers to learn what they are doing to have their research used when decisions are made in school districts and in schools. Researchers are being asked about:
- How they are producing and disseminating their research evidence.
- Their experiences of using different media for disseminating research findings.
- Their perceptions of the gaps between research and practice.
CRUE will be surveying through the fall with a goal of having 300 education researchers from Universities, Regional Education Labs, Think Tanks, Foundations, and research organizations across the nation. This survey will provide the field’s first real insights as to how education research may be influencing practice, as well as shed light on the beliefs researchers hold about the connections between research and practice.
This survey is a complement to one that CRUE used with educators. Over the past two years, CRUE surveyed over 4500 educators in 155 schools, nationwide. That survey focused on how educators locate and evaluate education research to use as they make decisions about their practice. CRUE is in the process of analyzing this data now.
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CRUE's staff is composed of experts in the production and dissemination of research, and the use of data and research evidence by schools and school leaders. The work of the Center is funded by the Institute of Education Sciences.
"The ultimate goal of these surveys is to identify strategies that can be implemented to increase the efficiency of education research being used to improve education policies and practices to improve the educational outcomes for children".
-CRUE Program Coordinator, Debbie Micklos
To learn more about CRUE projects click here.
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New Books, Published Journals, & Effective Evaluations
Dr. Zachary Collier, Assistant Professor of Education, has had a busy year recently publishing "HIV Stigma, Depressive Symptoms, and Substance Use" in the AIDS Patient Care and STDs.
Earnshaw, V. A., Eaton, L. A., Collier, Z. K., Watson, R. J., Maksut, J. L., Rucinski, K. B., Kelly, J. F., & Kalichman, S. C. (2020). HIV Stigma, Depressive Symptoms, and Substance Use. AIDS Patient Care STDS. 34(6):275-280. https;//doi: 10.1089/apc.2020.0021.
"Stimulant Abuse in Burn Patients Is Associated With an Increased Use of Hospital Resources "
Hulsebos, I. F., Pham, C. H., Collier, Z. J., Fang, M., Vrouwe, S. Q., Sugiyama, A., Yenikomshian, H. A., Garner, W. L., Gillenwater, J. (2020). Stimulant Abuse in Burn Patients Is Associated With an Increased Use of Hospital Resources. Journal of Burn Care & Research, Volume 41, Issue 5, 921–925, https://doi.org/10.1093/jbcr/iraa087.
For more info on Dr. Collier's projects please contact him here.
Dr. Allison Karpyn also published several papers and collaborated with colleagues. She has recently published.
“Public-Private Partnerships to Promote Healthy Food Access”
"Correlates of Healthy Eating in Urban Food Desert Communities"
"Parent Perspectives on Family-Based Psychosocial Interventions for Congenital Heart Disease"
Gramszlo, C., Karpyn, K., Demianczyk, A ., Shillingford, A., Riegel, E., Kazak, A ., Sood, E. (2020). Parent Perspectives on Family-Based Psychosocial Interventions for Congenital Heart Disease. The Journal of Pediatrics, Volume 222, 264-265. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpeds.2019.09.059
"Supporting parenting during infant hospitalisation for CHD"
Gramszlo, C., Karpyn, A., Christofferson, J., McWhorter, L. G., Demianczyk, A. C., Lihn, S. L., Tanem, J., Zyblewski, S., Boyle, E. L., Kazak, A. E., & Sood, E. (2020). Supporting parenting during infant hospitalisation for CHD. Cardiology in the young, 1–7. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1047951120002139.
"Fathers of Children With Congenital Heart Disease: Sources of Stress and Opportunities for Intervention"
Hoffman, M., Karpyn, A., Christofferson, J., Neely, T., McWhorter, L., Demianczyk, A., James, R., Hafer, J., Kazak, A., Sood, E. (2020). Fathers of Children with Congenital Heart Disease: Sources of Stress and Opportunities for Intervention. Pediatric Critical Care Medicine : a Journal of the Society of Critical Care Medicine and the World Federation of Pediatric Intensive and Critical Care Societies. https://DOI: 10.1097/pcc.0000000000002388.
Gramszlo, C., Karpyn, A., Demianczyk, A., Shillingford, A., Riegel, E., Kazak, A. (2020). Psychosocial interventions in families with a child with congenital heart disease. The Journal of Pediatrics. :https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpeds.2020.03.018
For more info on Dr. Karpyn' s projects contact her here.
CRESP Director Dr. Henry May collaborated with CRESP Research Assistant, Kathleen McCallops to publish "Using Youth Risk Behavior Survey data to analyze housing instability among Delaware public school students"
Aviles, A., McCallops, K., Hussain, M., Highberger, J., Ryding, R., Nai, S., May. (2020). Using Youth Risk Behavior Survey data to analyze housing instability among Delaware public school students. Journal of Children and Poverty. https://doi.org/10.1080/10796126.2020.1802649, H.
"Homelessness and Suicidality: The Role of Bullying and Parental Support"
Also, Dr. Sue Giancola, author of Program Evaluation: Embedding Evaluation into Program Design and Development, has prepared “Tips for Becoming Better Evaluators,” for Sage Publishing. In this, Dr. Giancola prioritizes five tips to become more effective evaluators and catalyze change. Read the article here.
The book is being lauded as " A great book that provides the details you need to teach and study program evaluation"- Michael J. Scicchitano
The mission of this the book is to increase the use of evaluation to improve programs. Program Evaluation provides the reader with the tools to be an effective evaluator. Further, it encourages readers to use findings from evaluation to focus on improvements. So, while the book intends to increase the use of evaluation, the goal is to build capacity across multiple fields to prioritize evaluation, by increasing knowledge about evaluation and improving skills to conduct evaluations.
Purchase Dr. Sue Giancola book here.
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Authors Q & A:
Q: What are your areas of expertise?
A: "I identify primarily as an expert in mixed methods research methodologies. I have expertise in thinking about how to use traditionally quantitative methods and traditionally qualitative methods to address a research problem despite the inherent differences in the reasoning processes that the two traditions have been built on. As an educator, my expertise is most closely aligned with mathematics cognition and, specifically, the cognitive demands of reading mathematical text".
-M. Gail Headley, PhD, Research Associate Center for Research in Education & Social Policy (CRESP) University of Delaware
Q: What does CRESP bring to the field?
A: Our work is aligned with UD’s civic engagement work, which is growing. Understanding how to measure and capture a university’s efforts in the community is a wonderful problem.”
-Allison Karpyn, PhD University of Delaware
Associate Director, Center for Research in Education & Social Policy Assistant Professor of Education, Behavioral Health & Nutrition
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Gail Headley
Gail Headley is a Research Associate III at the University of Delaware. She has been with CRESP since Fall 2019. During her time at CRESP, she has worked on multiple projects already.
With Gail's work on the College Success Report winding up, she has been focused on two other CRESP projects recently.
She is helping with the startup details of the new IES College-Readiness project. This is a multi-year collaboration with Delaware Department Of Education aimed at making connections between Delaware’s local curricula and course offerings, statewide assessments, and students’ responses to feedback on their assessment performance. Ultimately, we hope the results will have implications for leveraging data to improve students' educational trajectories through high school and into college. She also works on a National Science Foundation's Professional Formation of Engineers project which began before she joined CRESP. They are in the drafting stage of writing the paper related to a task choice survey developed for the project. The survey aims to understand how students collaborate to complete a first-year engineering project. Last spring, they revamped the survey because the first versions were undermined by social desirability bias. They devised a multi-pronged plan of attack for the current version that appears to reduce bias in self-reported time spent and generate insights into how students think about effort in relationship to Bloom’s taxonomy and identity research.
Gail also collaborates with researchers at Carleton University (CU) in Ottawa. They are excited about an “in press” manuscript soon to be published in the Journal of Numerical Cognition. "Knowledge of Mathematical Symbols Goes Beyond Numbers" presents the results of a study conducted at the CU's Centre for Applied Cognitive Research using the symbol decision task that Gail created as the centerpiece of her dissertation on Symbolic Mathematics Language Literacy. For Gail, it is an important step towards publishing the overarching mixed methods findings of her dissertation. She hopes that this publication paves the way for others to use the task to develop a better understanding of how students learn to read and write mathematical symbols.
Gail identifies primarily as an expert in mixed methods research methodologies. She has expertise in thinking about how to use traditionally quantitative methods and traditionally qualitative methods to address a research problem despite the inherent differences in the reasoning processes that the two traditions have been built on. As an educator, Gail's expertise is most closely aligned with mathematics cognition and, specifically, the cognitive demands of reading mathematical text.
Gail is fascinated with René Descartes! He is the philosopher credited with, “I think, therefore I am.” He is the mathematician behind the Cartesian coordinate system students start learning about third grade and usually have mastered by fifth grade. Also, Descartes is well-known for doing some of his best thinking in the middle of the night, like Gail!
Read more about Gail's expertise in an article published earlier this year on “Multilevel Mixed Methods Research Designs: Advancing a Refined Definition”. (Headley & Plano Clark, 2020) A recent article in the Educational Psychologist Journal advocated for the use of multilevel mixed methods research designs using Gail's refined definition as a foundation.
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Tara Silberg
Senior Tara Silberg' s major is Human Services and she minors in Jewish Studies. Tara began working with CRESP as an Honors student this past spring and then joined as an employee with CRESP over the summer. She is looking forward to graduation at the end of the fall semester and plans to pursue a career in medical social work or mental health counseling after graduate school.
She is currently working on the Lori's Hands project with Allison Karpyn and Tara Tracy. Lori’s Hands is a program that matches college students to assist disabled adults who live in the community.
Outside of her work at CRESP, she has applied to be a Fulbright Scholar in Israel for the 2021-2022 year; if selected, she will be pursuing her Master's Degree in Conflict Resolution and Mediation at Tel Aviv University. After graduate school she hopes to go into the nonprofit field in the area of Holocaust education.
This summer Tara worked Interning for NYC Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez, and was also featured in the UD Blog Squad website in September, "I was very excited to be featured on the Career Center blog post... I felt pretty special after it was published when I had a few people from UD, say "hey I saw you on the website/email/etc." It definitely gave me a boost of motivation"
Tara's experience this summer, though she worked remotely has given her new knowledge and valuable insight on all of the jobs she may want to consider career-wise after she graduates. The Covid-19 "new normal" has certainly taken some adjusting but she feels lucky to have family and close friends nearby to adjust with her. Tara has a bittersweet feeling about leaving UD this fall but feels she is well equipped to navigate the new normal that maybe ahead. Read more about Tara's summer below.
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CRESP is looking forward to times when we will all be able to work in the same space again and go to conferences beyond Zoom. The UD community and CRESP continues to work diligently on our center and community goals.
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Pearson Hall
125 Academy Street
Newark, DE 19716
Phone: 302-831-2928
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