This year’s APA Div. 37 Dissertation Award Winner is Samantha Gonzalez, a third-year doctoral graduate student studying clinical psychology at the University of Alabama, Birmington. Samantha grew up in Modesto, California, and is the first in her family to earn a graduate degree. Before beginning her PhD, Samantha completed both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in psychology at California State University, Chico. While at Chico, Samantha took a course in the psychology of marriage with a challenging yet inspiring professor who encouraged her to pursue her interests further in graduate school. She went on to write her master’s thesis entitled, "Intergenerational Transmission of Factors Surrounding Intimate Partner Violence," which explored how domestic violence impacts the trajectory of the nuclear family system. After her earning her master’s, Samantha wanted to continue probing how familial dynamics diverge leading some to thrive and others to deteriorate. Cristina Rodriguez, her current PhD advisor, was a motivating factor not only for her pursuing her doctoral degree at the University of Alabama but also for focusing on the intersection of family systems and child maltreatment.
Studying family dynamics has always been a scholarly interest, and Samantha was drawn the idea of advocating for parents and children in need, and assessing the risk of violence in the home. Since starting her doctoral program, Samantha has adopted a lens of resilience, positive psychology and prevention when thinking about child maltreatment. Rather than strictly focusing on how child abuse and neglect negatively affects children, Samantha also wanted to illuminate the malleable mechanisms, which could potentially prevent maltreatment from ever occurring. This alternative perspective has led to her dissertation, “Shifting the Narrative: Promoting Positive Parents Independent of Abuse Risk”. Specifically, Samantha’s research focuses on different aspects of parenting behavior, which contribute to the risk of physical abuse, but furthermore on the qualities which buffer parents from perpetrating violence. Her dissertation is longitudinal in design and began with a sample of low-risk and high-risk mothers who were in their third-trimester of pregnancy. The mothers and babies were then interviewed at three additional time points, and data collection completed when the children were four-years-old. Samantha is primarily interested in the parents’ empathy for their children, especially during moments of distress. One of the goals of Samantha’s dissertation work will be to identify how parents can modify how they view and make judgments about their children’s behavior. It is the hope that this qualitative shift may lead to greater positive parenting and less child maltreatment.
After completing her PhD, Samantha wants to continue in applied clinical research so her findings can inform family policy and help build parent-child intervention programs. When asked where she would like to work, Samantha replied that, “it’s more about the mission of the work, [and] less about the place I work”. Although she does have some hopes of returning to the West Coast, Samantha’s main goal is continue studying different ways to promote positive parenting and foster healthy families. In recognition of her academic success and ambitious research aims, Samantha was recently awarded a National Institute of Health training fellowship through the Center for Clinical and Translation Science at her home university.
When Samantha is not busy completing her dissertation, she enjoys reading, going to the park with her three dogs Paisley, Rebel and Moose, and relaxing in one of Birmingham’s many breweries. Living in the south has been a cultural shift for Samantha coming from California, but she has found that the individuals she treats in the university’s psychology clinic are always grateful for her services and this experience has offered her a greater sense of purpose in her community.