Effects of an Online Mindfulness Intervention for First-Year Students Transitioning to College
Summary:
This study looks at the effects of completing a 30-Day Mindfulness program but participants share the characteristic of being in a transitory period of their life (student life). This study pairs up 2 students from The Claremont Colleges Consortium (one 1st-year undergraduate student with one graduate student) to investigate effects of dual-participation in a study for accountability as well as effects on emotion, well-being, happiness, and other factors.
Principal Investigators:
Saida Heshmati & Marcus Rodriguez (Pitzer College)
Project Leads:
Jaymes Paolo Rombaoa
Research Assistants:
Ezra Isabel Cabreros
Undergraduate RAs: Yilin Li (Pitzer College), Lila Avendano Dreyfuss (Pitzer College), Lizbeth Valdivia-Jauregu (Scripps College), Julia Ho (Pitzer College), Jenna Ledbetter (Pitzer College), Juliana Hwang (Pitzer College), Kaitlyn Willow Chin (Scripps College), Alison Cary (Pitzer College)
Contact for further information:
jaymes-paolo.rombaoa@cgu.edu
Well-Being for Cancer Caregivers
SUMMARY:
Currently in the Well-being Lab we are leading a series of projects around optimizing caregiver well-being for volunteer caregivers. Caregivers are broadly defined as individuals who provide health related assistance for patients, and can be friends, family, and loved ones. Caregivers often experience immense stress and burden, and are at risk for a plethora of health issues. Therefore, these lab projects seek to improve the well-being for caregivers from an interdisciplinary perspective.
Current projects include: 1) various research streams around novel assessment approaches, including ecological momentary assessment in caregiving, 2) literature reviews and synthesis of existing models for understanding caregiver well-being across the lifespan, 3) incorporating interdisciplinary approaches (i.e. medical wearables) to researching caregiver well-being throughout their daily experiences.
Projects are currently funded by the Fletcher Jones Foundation, and future funding will be pursued through an R21 grant to NIH through the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR).
PROJECT LEADS:
Ximena Giesemann
PROJECT TEAM MEMBERS:
None at the moment, but we are looking! Please let us know if you are interested in working with our team 🙂
CONTACT:
Pathways to Well-Being During COVID-19 in US, Iran, and China
PROJECT TITLE:
Pathways to Well-Being Across Adulthood and in Three Culturally-Diverse Countries Impacted by a Pandemic Disease: Life During COVID-19
SUMMARY:
This project was conducted during the outbreak and spread of COVID-19 in Spring 2020. We surveyed participants from three countries (China, Iran, US) that were heavily impacted by coronavirus due to high numbers of reported COVID-19 cases and societal/cultural differences. We also investigated age differences in the US by comparing younger adults (18-35 years old) and older adults (55+ years old) due to the differential impact of COVID-19 on different age groups. Lastly, we utilized machine learning technology to analyze the qualitative narratives of US participants to further investigate specifically how adults have been impacted and coped with life during COVID-19. Currently, we are analyzing data results collected from April-May 2020.
The ramifications of COVID-19 have undoubtedly directly disrupted people’s well-being and development and indirectly through their immediate/extended environments. Given a person’s individual factors (such as age, gender, and health/health behaviors), as well as their contexts (microsystems, state, country, culture), people will nonetheless respond differently to COVID-19-related lifestyle changes. We therefore take a developmental and cross-cultural psychological research perspective to examine and understand the pathways to resilience and well-being in the face of mass collective trauma for various developmental systems.
In a series of quantitative and qualitative studies, we aimed to investigate the individual-level and context-dependent factors that effectively lead to improved resiliency and overall better functioning and well-being during a traumatic event such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
RESEARCH TEAM:
Saida Heshmati, Olivia Ellis, Jeffrey Ramdass, Jaymes Paolo Rombaoa, Qiuhua (Jenny) Tang
CONTACT FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:
saida.heshmati@cgu.edu
Freshmen Daily Well-Being During COVID-19: Tracking Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) ABC PLEASE Mastery Skills
SUMMARY:
This ecological momentary assessment (EMA) 1-week study investigated the daily well-being of college freshmen during the COVID-19 pandemic and university-wide stay-at-home orders. Additionally, we are also tracking how students cope with this new normal of staying at home while still completing their undergraduate studies through the PLEASE Mastery Technique. This technique hails from the work of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) and is a method to help with emotional vulnerability as a tool for regulating emotions.
PLEASE Mastery Technique: Treat Physical iLlness, balanced Eating, avoid mood Altering drugs, balanced Sleep, get Exercise, and build Mastery.
We are currently in the data analysis and manuscript writing-phase of the study.
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS:
Saida Heshmati & Marcus Rodriguez (Pitzer College)
PROJECT LEADS:
Jaymes Paolo Rombaoa
RESEARCH ASSISTANTS:
Graduate RAs: Ezra Isabel Cabreros, Tyler Owen,
Undergraduate RAs: Yilin Li (Pitzer College), Lila Avendano Dreyfuss (Pitzer College), Lizbeth Valdivia-Jauregu (Scripps College), Julia Ho (Pitzer College), Jenna Ledbetter (Pitzer College)
Yilin Li (Pitzer College), Lila Avendano Dreyfuss (Pitzer College), Lizbeth Valdivia-Jauregu (Scripps College), Julia Ho (Pitzer College), Jenna Ledbetter (Pitzer College)
CONTACT FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:
jaymes-paolo.rombaoa@cgu.edu
Momentary Well-Being Project
Summary:
How does your well-being change over time on a daily, momentary basis? We are working on measuring psychological well-being as a complex, multifaceted state that changes over time. Specifically, we are evaluating how an individual’s well-being can develop and fluctuate on a momentary, day-to-day basis. This project investigates multiple measures of well-being over time as well as the efficacy of well-being interventions in efforts to shed light on how to promote human flourishing.
Project Leads:
Kathryn Doiron and David Li
Project Members:
Angelina Leigh, Ezra Isabel Cabreros, Lawrence Chan, Jaymes Paolo Rombaoa, Kelsey Carpenter, Olivia Ellis, Rachel Hutchinson, Ximena Giesemann