CIRP behavioral scientists work to determine why injury occurs and to understand how children recover physically and emotionally after an injury. Complementing the Center’s engineering and policy work, we study behavioral and psychological factors involved in injury prevention and injury recovery. We apply social and psychological theoretical foundations to create behavior change models that can help individuals or populations adopt and perform safe behaviors or help children and parents respond effectively to the challenges of dealing with an injury. Students in CIRP’s Behavioral Science Training Program may participate in research projects aimed at understanding factors involved in safe teen driving and positive recovery from injuries, understanding parents’ role in teaching adolescents to drive, parent-child factors in child injury recovery, and developing and evaluating web-based secondary prevention interventions.
The overarching goal of our core is to prevent child injury from occurring and to promote positive outcomes following pediatric injury. CIRP behavioral scientists develop and evaluate interventions to prevent injury and negative consequences post-injury (i.e., prevent the development of posttraumatic stress or other lasting physical or psychosocial problems). An example of our work is AfterTheInjury.org, CIRP’s award-winning website that gives parents the tools they need to help their children fully recover after an injury.
Student Responsibilities:
- Attend weekly project meetings
- Attend regular mentorship meetings (as agreed upon with supervisor)
- Become familiar with research protocols for selected projects
- Screen, recruit, and enroll participants for research protocols
- Perform data management (i.e., data entry and quality assurance)
- Fulfill other assigned responsibilities as appropriate
Necessary Qualifications:
- Students must be enrolled in or have completed an undergraduate or graduate training program.
- Typical undergraduate majors include Psychology, Communications, Pre-Med, and others leading to health professions.
- Typical graduate studies include Psychology, Medicine, Public Health, Communications, Behavioral Science, or other Mental Health-related areas.
Though not required, knowledge of SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences), Microsoft Access, and Microsoft Excel is preferred.