My program of scholarly activity focuses on three primary areas and one emerging area of interest: a) sexual aggression, b) women's sexual, psychological, and relational health, c) couple and family therapy training process/outcome research, and d) the use of technology (i.e. sexting, texting, Facebook, Twitter) on psychological, sexual, and relational health.
a) My first area of scholarly attention centers on sexual aggression in interpersonal relationships and reflects my long standing research interest in how interpersonal violence influences various aspects of one's sexual, psychological and relational health. The ultimate aim of this research is to provide a deeper understanding of the complex dynamics of sexual aggression within interpersonal relationships.
b) Extending beyond experiences of interpersonal violence and its relation to sexual, psychological and relational health, I became very interested in additional aspects of sexual health such as sexual functioning and sexual satisfaction in dating and marital relationships. Moreover, as a clinician, aspects of sexual health such as sexual functioning and satisfaction with and without a history of sexual abuse and interpersonal violence are particularly salient issues in couple and individual therapy.
c) As core faculty of the Couple and Family Therapy Program at URI I believe it is of the utmost importance that my therapeutic and clinical work inspires my research and that my research supports my teaching, service, and outreach. This leads to my third area of scholarly interest, couple and family therapy process and outcome research. I am particularly interested in what makes therapy successful as well as identifying factors that lead to a successful training process.
d) My emerging area of research focus combines my long standing interest in using a biopsychosocial framework for looking at sexual, psychological and relational health and extends this interest by examining the impact of social networking and the use of technology on these factors. I am specifically interested in the use of technology (i.e. sexting, texting, Facebook, Twitter, email, phone use) on sleep, physical and mental health and interpersonal relationships among the Net Generation. Dr. Sue K. Adams and I formed a successful collaboration due to our combined interest in this area. We have two ongoing studies, and one prior study, which examine the impact of technology use on sleep, physical health, mental health, and interpersonal relationships. Specifically, we are working to identify implications for student technology use in effort to uncover and disseminate information about the short-term health (i.e. physical and relational health) and long-term personal and professional consequences of using technology and sharing sensitive information in the Net Generation. Second, forming collaboration with Dr. Barbara Newman, we began a pilot study, Health, intimacy, and belonging: Perspectives on the transition to college.