Participate In One of Our Studies!
Now Enrolling Participants - Teen Transition Study
Why are we doing this study?
The purpose of this research study is to examine how transitions during adolescence, like puberty, influence mental health (e.g., anxiety, depression, ADHD). We are interrested in how these transitions into the teen years are further impacted by different factors, like youth cognitive skills and emotion processes, as well as their relationships with their family and friends. One unique part of our study also involves measuring your child's mood and behavior in real time with surveys sent via email or text message.
What does my family have to do to participate?
You and your child will attend one in-person visit at the University of Iowa in Stuit Hall. The visit will last for approximately 2-3 hours. During the visit, you will complete a semi-structured interview with a trained research assistant. This interview will ask you to report on your child's past and current mental helath symptoms. Additionally, you will complete questionnaires on a computer by yourself about your child's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and their experience progressing through puberty. Your child will complete a vareity of paper-and-pencil and computerized tasks. During one of the tasks, your child will be connected to a heart rate monitor via 2 electrodes placed on their collarbone and rib cage. This is a painless process but will allow us to measure their heart rate while watching video clips. Your child will also complete questionniares on a computer about their thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and pubertal development.
After the visit, we will ask that you and your child each complete a series of brief surveys that will be sent to you via SMS text message or email. These surveys are very short (<2 minutes) and will ask you and your child to each rate their current feelings and behavior. These will be sent at regular times (3 times per day) that best fit your schedule for 2 weeks.
Are we offering compensation for this study?
Yes! We are offering compensation for your family's participation. Each person will be paid $40 for the visit ($40 to parent and $40 to child). Each person will be paid another $20 each for completion of the at-home surveys ($20 to parent and $20 to child). Each person can earn $60 (total of $120/family). Payment can be via eletronic check or gift card. Feedback will also be provided if requested.
I'm interested! What do I do next?
The first step is to complete the online eligibility screening here. If you are eligible, you can schedule your appointment via our online scheduling system or you can send an email of your preferred days/times and we can get you on the calendar. Note - our summer availability is mosty mornings and afternoons during the week. We will have more openings starting in August and can accommodate more evening and weekend appointments.
Daily Experiences of Depression and Anxiety: This study is focused on understanding how symptoms of anxiety and depression among young adults fluctuate on a daily basis. Many measures of depression and anxiety were originally designed to assess how individuals experiences these disorders over long periods of time (e.g., over the past two weeks), and it is currently not known if these measures are able to accurately measure symptom fluctuations as they occur over shorter, more dynamic periods of time (e.g., over the past few hours). The purpose of this study is to address this issue using a longitudinal research design, where individuals currently experiencing symptoms of depression and anxiety will track their symptoms multiple times a day over the course of two weeks. We will then assess whether our current concepts of depression and anxiety disorders are adequate to capture how these disorders occur in real-time, or if how measures need to measure more specific aspects of these disorders (e.g., measuring specific aspects of depression separately rather than as one large "depression" score).
Social Media Use and Mental Health: This project focuses on understanding the reciprocal influences of emotional functioning and social media use among college students. Social media has been linked to numerous mental health difficulties, including increased ADHD symptoms, but mechanisms of association remain unclear. The aims of this project are to examine executive and emotional functioning and social media use frequency as well as its function in the lives of college students. Participation in this study involves an in-person interview, neurocognitive testing, and questionnaires followed by a 7 day period of ecological momentary assessment. During the 7 days, participants will be probed 4 times per day to rate their behavior, mood, emotions, and social media use. On Day 8, participants will complete a short measure of their mood. This study was moved online due to COVID and remains online.
Evaluation of G-E Processes Across Harmonized ADHD Cohorts
Polygenic Risk for ADHD: With assistance from collaborators at Oregon Health and Science University Center for ADHD Research and the Broad Institute at MIT, we are conducting analyses with archival samples of youth with and without ADHD to examine how polygenic risk scores derived from data in large genetic consortia may help characterize one pathway of genetic risk for ADHD. We are particularly interested in whether polygenic risk scores may serve as moderators of risk and protective factors for ADHD. We are interested in early developmental exposures (e.g., preterm birth, lead exposure) as well as contextual processes within the family (e.g., exposure to conflict, inconsistent parenting). We are also exploring these associations using data from the ABCD Study.
