Adolescent Development Lab

Welcome to the Adolescent Development Lab! For the Latino Youth Care Project (LYCP), click here.

Lisa Crockett

Biography: Professor Crockett's research interests focus on adolescent risk behavior and on ethnic differences in parenting and adolescent adjustment. Her early work focused on the role of puberty in adolescents’ psychosocial development and adjustment. Later she pursued a longitudinal study of rural adolescents in which she examined predictors and consequences of early sexuality activity and heavy drinking among rural youth. In the past 10 years Dr. Crockett has pursued two main lines of research, one focused on the role of self-regulation in the development of risky sexual behavior (and other risk behaviors) and another focusing on ethnic differences and similarities in the connections between parenting and adolescent adjustment. She and her colleagues have examined (a) childhood origins of adolescents' sexual risk-taking, (b) relations between parenting practices and adolescent adjustment across different ethnic groups, and (c) relationships of temperament to internalizing and externalizing problems from middle childhood to adolescence. A current project focuses on the development and well-being of Latino adolescents. Dr. Crockett’s work has been funded by NICHD, NIAAA, and NSF. She served as Associate Editor of the Journal of Research on Adolescence from 1999-2004 and currently serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Early Adolescence and Developmental Psychology. She is an editor of five books, including Parenting and Parent-Adolescent relationships among Asian Americans and Health Disparities in Youth and Families. A sixth book, on rural minority youth, is underway.

Funded Research Projects

2010-2013 “Ecological Model of Latino Youth Development.” National Science Foundation $315,000. (Co-PI/PI)

2008-2010 “Puberty, Emotionality, and Self-Regulation: Longitudinal Links to Psychological Adjustment.” National Institutes of Health (NIH) $144,000. (PI)

2001-2004 "Ethnicity, Parenting and Adolescent Adjustment" National Institutes of Health (NICHD), $387,784. (PI)

2001-2003 "Childhood Origins of Adolescent Sexual Risk-Taking." National Institutes of Health (NIMH), $425,907. (M. Raffaelli, PI)

Student Researchers and Collaborators

Sarah Beal, Ph.D. Sarah’s research interests center on health and wellbeing during the transition to adulthood. Her master’s project examined the implications of adolescents’ aspirations and extracurricular activities for their adult education attainment. Her dissertation focused on the development and characterization of future orientation among adolescents. She is currently completing a post-doctoral fellowship at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.

Jennifer Wolff, Ph.D. Jen’s interests focus on adolescent decision making and its relationship to risk taking and risky behavior. Her master’s project examined the contributions of deliberative decision making, parenting, and affiliation with deviant peers to adolescents’ alcohol and drug use, sexual risk taking, and delinquent behavior. Her dissertation examined the relationships among decision making processes, neurobiological variables, and risk behavior among college students.

Rachel Hayes

Chelsie Temmen

Alexander Wasserman