Gretna and Chadron, Nebraska, are each home to slightly more than 5,500 residents. That’s where their similarity ends.
The city of Gretna borders a major metropolitan suburb, while—nearly 500 miles away in Nebraska’s Panhandle—Chadron is a short drive from the Badlands of South Dakota.
If there is one thing CYFS affiliate Victoria Molfese has learned over the course of her career, it’s that you don’t do research alone. The Chancellor’s Professor received this year’s Distinguished Research/Creative Career award, as CEHS recognized outstanding faculty and staff at an April 10 awards ceremony.
With collaborative support and seed funding, CYFS faculty affiliates are prepared to grow their research base this spring.
The Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families and Schools (CYFS) recently provided grant proposal and development assistance to eight CEHS faculty—all of whom received 2015-16 Layman Awards. The award, funded by UNL’s Office of Research and Economic Development, provides $10,000 in seed money for untenured faculty and supports researchers in their pursuit of external funding.
In the fifth presentation of the 2014-2015 Methodology Applications Series, research assistant professor Leslie Hawley discusses “Developing Better Questionnaires and Measures: Psychometric Review.”
Once data from questionnaires and other non-cognitive measures have been collected, researchers are faced with the task of providing psychometric evidence to answer questions related to internal consistency and validity. This presentation is the final installment of our three-part series integrating practical strategies and best practices in questionnaire and measurement development from the fields of psychometrics, survey research and educational psychology. It will provide a conceptual overview and applied examples of the psychometric review process.
The MAP Academy will host the Spring 2015 Nebraska Methodology Workshop Monday, April 13 at the Nebraska Innovation Campus. The workshop features David Kaplan, the Patricia Busk Professor of Quantitative Methods in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Distance technology and community mobilization are transforming the mental health landscape of rural Nebraska, where the success of CYFS affiliates’ research may soon benefit communities worldwide.
Richard Bischoff, chair of child, youth and family studies, and Paul Springer, associate professor, are partnering with international colleagues to address an issue that they say transcends geography and culture—access to mental health services. Their model, which was developed six years ago in rural Nebraska communities, integrates distance technology and begins by drawing community members around the proverbial table.
The Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families and Schools is now accepting applications for the CYFS Research Fellowship Program. The fellowship program provides an in-house, professional leave for faculty within the College of Education of Human Sciences and supports the continued advancement of research and grant-directed activities. Fellows will receive a one-course buy-out for two consecutive semesters.
The Nebraska Academy for Methodology, Analytics and Psychometrics will host Bethany Bray for the Emerging Scholars Series April 9-10. The inaugural two-day event includes a keynote presentation, statistics workshop and a meeting for graduate students and postdocs.