Violeta J Rodriguez

Dr. Rodriguez will be considering graduate students as a primary research advisor for the Fall 2024.

My lab is dedicated to addressing the inadequate and inaccessible mental health care of minoritized youth and their families (e.g., racially and ethnically minoritized families, immigrant families, Spanish-speaking caregivers, LGBTQIA+ families, families disproportionately affected by chronic illness). My research program aims to achieve three major aims, with the goal of improving health outcomes for these underserved populations. Firstly, I strive to gain a better understanding of the causal and perpetuating factors contributing to health disparities among youth and their parents in understudied, underserved, and underprivileged groups. By identifying these factors, we can develop targeted interventions to address the unique challenges faced by these populations. Secondly, we are committed to improving assessment methods used to evaluate health outcomes and predictors (e.g., parenting) in parents and youth, ensuring their validity across different cultural, research, and clinical contexts. Through the development of culturally sensitive and contextually appropriate assessment tools, we aim to improve the accuracy of how we assess various factors (e.g., parenting) in research and interventions. Lastly, I am interested in the translation of evidence-based health promotion strategies and interventions into underserved settings to promote health equity.

As my research interests span multiple disciplines including clinical psychology, developmental psychology, public health, and quantitative methodology, there are abundant opportunities for lab members to engage in a diverse range of projects and cultivate various research skills. Despite the broad scope of our work, all endeavors within the lab are interconnected, offering ample collaboration opportunities among lab members and external collaborators to collectively contribute to our overarching goals. Furthermore, as a methodologist by training, I emphasize the use of a wide range of methods (e.g., quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods) and samples to explore our questions, as multimethod approaches are often needed to better understand minoritized families. This approach allows lab members to develop and refine a diverse set of skills, equipping them with a comprehensive toolkit for conducting rigorous and impactful research.