HDFS Areas of Specialization
- Family Development
- The family is central to HDFS. The family is a
primary context in which individual socialization
and development take place. It is, perhaps, the principal
medium through which culture, society, and social
change affect the individual. And it is a social
fact in itself that feeds back and can accelerate
or mitigate changes occurring in the broader society.
Graduate study at Penn State offers students a unique
opportunity to develop the substantive, methodological,
and theoretical skills necessary to study human families.
- Individual Development: Childhood
- A variety of core concerns underlie
child development research conducted in HDFS. Much
of the research is motivated by questions about individual
differences in children’s health and psychological
development as well as he origins and consequences
of such variation. Another core issue is the way
children change over time and the degree to which
earlier developmental patterns and experiences can
predict future growth and development. Because the
department has a multidisciplinary orientation, faculty
are interested not only in biological and experiential
causes and consequences, but also in working at multiple
levels of analysis. Researchers take into account
biology, genetics, psychophysiology, and health,
as well as sociocultural factors, environment, and
moment-to-moment interactions in the family and beyond.
They study the broader settings in which parents
and children develop, including day care and the
workplace, and the historical and societal context
in which the child, the family, and these settings
themselves are embedded.
- Individual Development:
Adolescence
- Adolescent Development faculty in HDFS pursue programs of research that span this developmental period, from the transition into adolescence through emerging adulthood. Their work cuts across all areas of the department, including family relationships, prevention, and methodology, and utilizes a range of methods, including surveys, diaries, interviews, and observations. Examples of current research projects include: Community-based violence prevention in adolescents; Heavy alcohol use among college students; Gender, ethnicity, and sexual behavior among college students; Links between parenting practice and adolescent dieting and eating problems; The development of sexual orientation; Family relationships and adolescent gender socialization.
- Individual Development:
Adulthood and Aging
- Graduate study in adult development and aging allows students to explore topics in emerging adulthood, midlife, and old age. The program emphasizes the complex ways that personal characteristics, social partners, and organizations interact to influence development and change throughout the adult years. Students conduct research within a broad framework for understanding relations between developing people and the key contexts of their lives: family, workplace, community, and society. Faculty research interests include predictors of the transition to adulthood, parent-child and other family relationships, economic factors and well-being, predictors and consequences of stressful events, maintenance and enhancement of cognitive abilities, and psychosocial contributions to functional capacity in later life. Opportunities for international experience are available in several countries including Australia, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland. Students may combine their specialization in adult development and aging with emphases in prevention research, family studies, or methodology.
- Intervention
- In HDFS, intervention research is the science of
designing, implementing, and evaluating a broad array
of approaches for improving the quality of life for
individuals, families, and communities. Typically,
interventions in HDFS are developmental in focus,
meaning they are designed to prevent problems or
to enhance healthy development, rather than to remediate
long-standing personal, relational, or family problems.
HDFS interventions often target the contexts in which
people develop including families, schools, health
and human service agencies, workplaces, and communities.
- Methodology
- Research methodology is one area of study in the
graduate program in Human Development and Family
Studies. Research methodology is a topic that is
relevant to every research endeavor in the study
of human development and the family. In fact, research
in our field is methodologically challenging for
many reasons. Studies must be designed with the utmost
care in order to narrow down the list of possible
explanations for results; the highly complex behaviors
that are often of interest are difficult to measure;
and sophisticated state-of-the-art statistical procedures
often are required. Research related to the improvement
of designs and measurement models and the development
and extension of statistical models has become an
important area of intellectual inquiry in the developmental
sciences. The field of human development and family
studies needs researchers who not only understand
the critical substantive issues driving our search
for knowledge, but who also have the expertise in
statistical methods and research design that enable
us to address these issues fruitfully. Areas of statistical
and methodological research such as structural equation
modeling, multilevel and growth curve modeling, time
series and dynamical systems modeling, latent class
and latent transitions analysis, growth mixture modeling,
missing data analysis, and observational methodology
represent some of the exciting areas of research
currently under investigation by faculty in the Department
of Human Development and Family Studies.
Cross Cutting Themes of Research