Center for Anxiety and Substance Abuse at FIU

RESEARCH INTEREST

Currently I am conducting my Honor’s Thesis on meaning in life, mindfulness, and their possible relationship with identity development. As a follow up to this study, I am going to conduct a research project which aims at collecting both quantitative and qualitative data that includes the different domains of identity (i.e., career, religion, family, spirituality, etc.), meaning and purpose in life, positive well-being, and negative factors (i.e., substance use).

Continuing to study Positive Psychology through intervention research is my primary current interest; however, a secondary focus of studying positive psychology within culturally diverse population is another area of study I intend to cultivate within my graduate studies. Particular to intervention research, I would like to further study the role of the therapist and intrapersonal relationships within the client, on variables such as identity development, adaptive psychological factors (i.e., well-being, self-efficacy, motivation, etc), meaning and purpose in life, as well as maladaptive factors (i.e., substance use, violence, etc.).

RESEARCH EXPERIENCE

Community Based Intervention Research Group (C-BIRG)

Project: Guided Adolescent Problem Solving (GAPS)

Evaluation Specialist

July 2006 to Present

Principal Investigator: Dr. Andreas Gil #305-348-5289
Co-Investigator: Henry Artigues M.S.Ed. #305-348-4867
Clinical Supervisor: Staci Leon Morris Psy.D 305-348-5613

Duties:

Administering screenings, baseline and follow-up interviews with adolescent clients (including intake, DSM-IV criteria diagnosis, and substance use and violence measures, Time Line Follow Back Calendar).
Training new employees and interviewers, presenting program to schools and recruiting participants for study.
Filing and maintaining client medical records, tracking contact and progress reports on file. Contacting parents for phone interviews and retrieving teacher evaluations through written questionnaires.
Rating therapy tapes, creating and editing program guideline and activity forms, and tracking participant progress on spreadsheets.

Miami Youth Development Program (YDP) Case Interviewer

Spring 2007 to Present

Director: Dr. William M. Kurtines #305-348-3941
Supervisor: Kyle Eichas

Duties:

Interviewed alternative high school students, conducted assessments, transcribed audio-taped interview, entered data into SPSS, and organized data.
Assisted with Relational Data Analysis (RDA) coding for ongoing research projects.

Center for Anxiety and Substance Abuse (CASA)

Senior Research Assistant

Fall 2005 to Present

Director: Dr. Lindsay Ham (305) 348-3374
Supervisor: Tracey Garcia BA (305) 348-2764

Duties:

Training and Coordinating of other Undergraduates, Administration of Measures, Poster Presentations, & Data Entry (SPSS)
Chosen to conduct assessments of anxiety in the current Bar Lab
- Includes administering phone surveys, medical screenings, and blood alcohol concentration (BAC) level; being part of a social interaction task, assessing anxiety and urge to drink, and monitoring student participants while assessing for high anxiety

Lab Manager, CASA

Created training manuals and a 2-day training program that assisted in training new undergraduate research assistants. Hosted the 2-day training program and followed up with individual needs and further training.

Article Archive Supervisor, CASA

Helped create a database that makes finding important articles in CASA easier and efficient; trained other undergraduates; conducted follow up to ensure that tasks were completed and completed correctly

Presentations:

Crook, B. C., Surace, F. I., Garcia, T.A., & Lindsay H. S., (2007, April). Preparing, Conducting, and Writing an Honor’s Thesis: A current student perspective. Florida International University Psychology Conference, Miami, FL.

Posters:

Crook, B. C., Surace, F. I., Garcia, T.A., & Lindsay H. S., (2007, November). Identity’s Relationship with Meaning in Life.

Submitted to the 2007 Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies Annual Conference, Philadelphia, PA.

Crook, B. C., Surace, F., Garcia, T.A., & Lindsay H. S., (2007, March). Existential Anxiety and its Relationship with Identity Distress. Poster accepted to be presented at the 2007 Society for Research in Identity Formation Annual Conference, Washington D.C., WV

Crook, B. C., Chen, P. Y. , Garcia, T.A., Ham, Lindsay, L. S., Olthius, J., & Zamboanga, B. L., (2006, November). Validity and Reliability of the COEA: Alcohol Outcome Expectancies and the Subjective Evaluation of those Effects. Poster accepted to be presented at the Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies Annual Conference, Chicago, IL.

Crook, B. C., Garcia, T.A., Mendez, S. & Lindsay H. S., (2006, November).Expectations, Evaluation, and Their Role with Social Anxiety. Poster accepted to be presented at the Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies Annual Conference, Chicago, IL.

Garcia, T. A., Benavides, D., Crook, B. C., & Ham, L. S. (2006, March). Social Anxiety, Gender, and Alcohol Use: The Relations among Hispanic Young Adults. Poster presented at the Anxiety Disorders Association of America’s 26th Annual Conference, Miami, FL.

Garcia, T. A.., Ham, L. S., & Crook, B. C., (2006, November). An Initial Examination of Social Anxiety and Marijuana Use among College Students. Poster accepted to be presented at the Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies Annual Conference, Chicago, IL.