The University of Massachusetts Amherst
University of Massachusetts Amherst

Search Google Appliance

Links

Meet the Methodology Consultation Staff

Methodology Consultation Staff

Holly Laws

Director, CRF Methodology Program
Lecturer, Psychological and Brain Sciences

Involvement: 

Research: 

Dr. Laws joined the CRF Methodology Program as Co-Director in Fall 2017. Formerly an Associate Research Scientist in Yale University's Psychiatry Department, Dr. Laws also serves as a research psychologist in the VA Connecticut Healthcare System. Her research focuses on using novel statistical methodologies to examine processes within close relationships implicated in mental and physical health. She has conducted multiple methodological workshops on the topic of multilevel modeling, including longitudinal, dyadic and daily diary applications. She received a Career Development Award from the VA's Rehabilitation Research and Development service, a study using dyadic methodology to examine and compare associations between relationship quality and well-being in male and female veterans and their relationship partners.

Office Location: 

Tobin 616

Email: 

Marielena Barbieri

Methodology Consultant

Involvement: 

Award: 

Methodology Scholarship

School or College: 

College of Natural Sciences

Mentor: 

Dr. Evelyn Mercado

Bio: 

Marielena Barbieri is a graduate student in the social psychology program in the department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. Under the mentorship of her advisor, Dr. Evelyn Mercado, her researchbroadly focuses on examining how environmental stressors impact Latinx adolescent’s development and health outcomes using a biopsychosocial lensand identifying sources of resiliency (i.e., cultural assets, familial relationships) that may serve to be protective.Her current research focuses onidentifying how different forms of discrimination (e.g., personal, vicarious) affect Latinx adolescent’sbiological functioning and psychopathology, while taking into account the cultural and phenotypic variations across Latinx subgroups.

Research Proposal Title: 

The Impact of Vicarious and Interpersonal Discrimination on Latinx Youth’s Biobehavioral Health

Research: 

Due to the increase in anti-immigration policies that have promoted a sharp rise in xenophobia in recent years, experiences of discrimination have become a pervasive and salient stressor for Latinx youth, which puts them at greater risk for the development of psychopathology. In particular, interpersonal discriminatory experiences have been found to negatively impact youth of colors’ biological functioning and their mental health. Yet research to date has examined how different experiences of discrimination (i.e., personal vs. vicarious) impact Latinx youths’ mental health, specifically through biological dysregulation. Furthermore, past and present literature tend to treat Latinx identities as homogenous and fails to consider the complex phenotypic variations across Latinx subgroups resulting from a long history of admixture between Africans, Indigenous and Europeans. Ultimately, this research has the potential to further our understanding of factors that contribute to the rates of discrimination that Latinx youths experience in their day-to-day lives, and the negative impact it has on their biological functioning and psychological wellbeing.

Email: 

GSGW Academic Year: 

Student Award Academic Year: 

Joel Ginn

Methodology Consultant

Involvement: 

Bio: 

Joel joined CRF in Spring 2018 as a methodology consultant. He has been trained in ANOVA, regression, and HLM and works primarily with SPSS and the PROCESS macro, though he has some training in HLM, MPlus, and R. As a consultant, Joel works with clients to conduct and interpret analyses and can aid in developing plans for data analysis. In his own work he studies the underlying psychology of climate change motivations, specifically why people do, or do not, choose to reduce their meat consumption for environmental reasons.

Email: 

Etienne Holder

Methodology Consultant

Involvement: 

School or College: 

School of Public Health and Health Sciences

Bio: 

Etienne is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences. She joined CRF in Fall 2021 as a methodology consultant with training in survival analysis, regression, and multivariate statistics. She primarily works in SAS and Stata but also has training in R and SPSS. In her own work, she studies the relationship between estrogenic activity, vitamin D and breast cancer risk and survival.

Email: 

Eleni Kapoulea

Eleni Kapoulea
Methodology Consultant

Involvement: 

Award: 

Community Engaged Research Award

School or College: 

College of Natural Sciences

Mentor: 

Dr. Becky Ready

Bio: 

Eleni A. Kapoulea is a fourth-year Ph.D. student of clinical psychology at UMass Amherst who joined the CRF methodology team in the Spring of 2023. Her research focuses on the associations among psychosocial factors, specifically loneliness, social support, and belonging, on health, including cardiovascular disease risk factors and cognitive functioning. She also has an interest in cross-cultural neuropsychology.

Research: 

There is little knowledge about the causes of loneliness in Cambodian Americans. Cambodian Americans have high rates of trauma due to the Khmer Rouge Genocide and intergenerational conflict due to acculturative family distancing, which are risk factors for loneliness in other populations. For my dissertation project, I will conduct a mixed-methods study that will include a sample of first-generation and second-generation Cambodian Americans residing in New England. Participants will complete questionnaires on demographics, loneliness, and trauma. Next, participants will complete semi-structured interviews (approximately 8-10 participants per generational cohort) and/or focus groups (approximately 4-6 participants per group; two focus groups per cohort).  

Cambodian Americans underutilize mental health services partly due to a lack of culturally informed social services and interventions. Indeed, there is a limited behavioral health workforce trained to meet the needs of Cambodian Americans. The results of this study will produce evidence that can be used to educate clinicians about factors contributing to Cambodian Americans’ loneliness. Thus, results will help practitioners improve culturally informed services and interventions to target risks for loneliness.  

 

Email: 

Student Award Academic Year: 

Stylianos Syropoulos

Methodology Consultant

Involvement: 

Award: 

Methodology Workshop Scholarship

School or College: 

Psychological and Brain Sciences

Bio: 

Stylianos (Stelios) Syropoulos is a fourth-year Ph.D. student in Social Psychology and the Psychology of Peace and Violence. Stylianos joined the CRF Methodology Team in the fall of 2021. He is proficient with SPSS, Mplus and SAS, and has received training in R. He has received training in and frequently uses ANOVA, Regression, Structural Equation Modelling and Hierarchical Linear Modelling (including Dyadic Data analysis) in his research. His work focuses on the antecedents of peace, intergroup conflict, and national identification.

Email: 

Student Award Academic Year: 

Dongwei Wang

Methodology Consultant

Involvement: 

Bio: 

Dongwei joined CRF in Spring 2018 as a Methodology Consultant and also serves as a Data Manager/Analyst for Rudd Adoption Program. She graduated from University at Buffalo where she had her training in quantitative research methodology which includes ANOVA, regression, hierarchical linear modeling, survival analyses. She also has knowledge of several statistical packages, such as SPSS, HLM, R, and SAS. She will be helping clients with research design, statistical analyses as well as results interpretation using her backgrounds in research methodology and experience conducting research using large-scale data.

Email: