Pioneer Class Dissertation Award

Parents and children engage in an interconnected and transactional process of coping with stress. These interactions serve to instruct children about methods for managing stress as they develop autonomy. Digital coping is a relatively new and understudied process of managing stress that can be both active (looking for information to solve problems) or avoidant (used social media for distraction). The way that parent-child dyads use digital coping in an interconnected way has implications for child development and future psychopathology. Using support from the Pioneer Classes Dissertation Award, Calissa Leslie-Miller will assess real-time indicators of interpersonal and transactional stress with the goal of identifying specific stressors and digital coping strategies that contribute to mental health outcomes.