Ph.D.
A bird sitting on a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking because her trust is not in the branch but in her own wings.
- Unknown
ABOUT ME
Hello, and welcome to my webpage!
I have created this webpage to give you a better understanding of who I am as a scholar, evaluator, and leader. I'm excited for you to learn more about my motivations, research, clinical, programming, and evaluation experiences; my service and community engagement; as well as my awards and honors.
I am a proud native of Charleston, SC, and Howard University alumna. I am currently a postdoctoral scholar in the Human Development and Family Sciences Program at Auburn University. My research interests focus on adolescents who display externalizing behaviors, parenting behaviors, and the development and evaluation of evidence-based youth and family programs. With the goal of improving familial relationships and adolescent behaviors, my research emphasizes understanding families experiencing difficult interpersonal interactions and assisting them via family-inclusive interventions. Ultimately, I would like my research to inform the development of youth and family programs by better understanding the role of families in adolescent outcomes.
My research breadth includes bullying perpetration, delinquency, substance use disorders, adolescent pregnancy, parenting, and school- and community-based youth and family programs. Although my research demonstrates breadth in family research, it encompasses depth in adolescent problem behaviors, intervention, and parenting research.
EDUCATION
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Adolescent Externalizing Behaviors
Program Evaluation
Parenting
2018
Auburn University
Certificate in Advanced Research Methods for Developmental & Family Science
2007-2011
Howard University
Bachelor's of Science
Psychology
2017-2021
Auburn University
Doctor of Philosophy
Human Development and Family Studies
Parent-child Relationships
Intervention Development
2015-2017
Auburn University
Master's of Science
Human Development and Family Studies
MY LATEST RESEARCH
See below for my most recent publication in the Journal of Child and Family Studies
"The Influence of Parenting on Bullying Prevention: Parenting as a Moderator of Adolescents’ Bullying Behaviors"
The development of adolescent delinquent behavior has been studied across disciplines for decades, resulting in a better understanding of trajectories to criminality from adolescence into adulthood. Such research often examines whether adolescent offending behavior persists over time based on the frequency of adolescent offending behaviors. However, there is a limited understanding of what offending looks like for convicted adolescents and whether adolescents change the types of offending behavior after a conviction. It is important to examine whether adolescent offenders continue to offend after conviction, as well as how they continue offending after a conviction. Based on the age-graded theory, a conviction could be a meaningful turning point that increases offending behavior for adolescents.
This paper identified patterns of offending type and to assess stability and changes of offending type over time in a sample of adolescent offenders who persist in offending behaviors.
The mechanisms by which school interracial climate might affect adolescent behavior outcomes, however, have not been examined through research. One possible mechanism is student aspiration expectation gaps, which is the misalignment of students’ educational aspirations and expectations. Large aspiration-expectation gaps, when educational aspirations exceed educational expectations, predicts lower school bonding, more behavioral and emotional difficulties, and poorer relationship with teachers. School interracial climate has also been related to student academic outcomes, including college preparation and academic achievement. Given this, school interracial climate may affect students’ beliefs of their ability to reach their educational aspirations; and misalignment of students’ educational aspirations and expectations may, in turn, cause feelings of frustration that result in risky behaviors.
This study examined the mediating effect of students’ aspiration expectation gaps in the relationship between school interracial climate and student risky behaviors.
Jessica Norton presenting at the Auburn University College of Human Sciences Research Symposium
Spring 2018
