Ann C. Crouter, Ph.D.

image of Ann Crouter

Ph. D., Cornell University, 1982

Professor of Human Development
Dean, College of Health and Human Development

Contact Information

201 Henderson
Pennsylvania State University
University Park, PA 16802

(814) 865-1420

ac1@psu.edu

Research

How do people's experiences at work affect their health, well-being, psychological development, family relationships? How does it affect their parenting and the health, well-being, and development of their children? How does family life make its mark on people when they go to work? These questions weave their way through my research projects, all of which examine work and family in different populations and points of the life-span. My research falls into three domains:

Family Relationships Research Website

With Susan McHale, I co-direct the Penn State Family Relationships Project, an NICHD-funded longitudinal study of gender socialization in dual-earner families. We began the study when the two oldest children in each participating family were about ages 10 and 8 and followed families until the eldest child completed high school. Paying equal attention to mothers and fathers and studying two children in each family enables us to make comparisons not only between different families (e.g., boys vs. girls) but also within them (brothers vs. sisters; mothers vs. fathers). My approach to our data is to compare the unfolding gender-related experiences, attitudes, and competencies of sons versus daughters in families that vary as a function of mothers' and fathers' gender-related attitudes and their work and family roles.

The Family Relationships project now includes two "sister studies" with similar designs and goals and foci on specific racial and ethnic groups.

Family Life Project

My work-family interests have also expanded to focus on parents in low-income jobs. I am part of a large collaborative program project by researchers at Penn State and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to examine the development of rural children's competence. This interdisciplinary team, led by Lynne Vernon Feagans at UNC, has identified almost 1300 families with newborns in rural counties in Pennsylvania and North Carolina and is following them intensively over three years, using a variety of observational, interview, and ethnographic methods. My part of the project focuses on the employment circumstances of parents in rural areas and traces the linkages between employment conditions, the quality of parenting, and children's unfolding social, emotional, cognitive, and linguistic competence. For me, it is an exciting opportunity to learn more about shift work, underemployment, and other possible work stressors that low-income mothers and fathers often juggle along with raising a young child.

Penn State Hotel Initiative

I am co-direct an interdisciplinary team of scholars interested in the work-family interface in the hotel industry. The goal of these studies is to produce data that will help the hotel industry design innovative policies and programs that will help managers and employees better manage the work-family interface. We have two grants, both of which began in 2005. John O’Neill (School of Hospitality Management) and I are co-direct a study funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to learn about what it is like to work in this fast-paced industry with a 24/7 schedule. We are collecting a variety of data, including interviews with top executives and hotel general managers, telephone surveys with departmental managers and their spouses, and a daily diary study of departmental managers and their spouses that examines, in a more detailed way, what daily life is like on the job and how daily experiences predict mood, physical health, and relationship experiences. David Almeida (HDFS) and I co-direct a study funded by NICHD, part of the Work, Family, and Health Network. We are one of 6 centers working together to develop a workplace intervention to improve the health and well-being of employees and their families, as well as the economic health of work organizations. The Network includes colleagues at the University of Minnesota, Portland State University, Michigan State University, Harvard University, Research Triangle Institute (RTI), and the Center for Health Research at Kaiser Permante. NIH support enables us to add the collection and assaying of salivary cortisol (a stress hormone) to the hotel project and to conduct a parallel study of hourly employees and their children. Our faculty colleagues include Jan Cleveland (I/O Psychology), Laura Klein (BioBehavioral Health), and Susan McHale (HDFS), as well as graduate students from four departments.

Education

Research and Professional Experience

Honors

Selected Publications