Each year, Div. 5 of APA offers awards to members of our discipline who have made outstanding achievements in quantitative and qualitative methods in psychology. Nominations for awards are posted in The Score, the SQIP newsletter, and information is posted on the Div. 5 website. This year, three subcommittees reviewed the nominations and designated the scholars and teachers to receive awards for 2020 (as noted below). At an awards ceremony organized by Div. 5 at the APA convention, all winners will be recognized and the Distinguished Awardees for Scientific Contributions and Contributions in Qualitative Inquiry will present an address.
Quantitative Awards
Committee: Rich Gonzalez, Rochelle Michel, and Ken Kelley
Samuel J. Messick Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions
The winner of the Samuel J. Messick Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions is Leona Aiken. Aiken is the primary author of Multiple Regression: Testing and Interpreting Interactions, a required reading in many introductory statistics courses in the social and behavioral sciences. Her book, written with Stephen West, has been cited more than 43,000 times. Aiken is also an author on Applied Multiple Regression/Correlation Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences, which has been cited over 52,000 times, and is a required text for many introductory regression courses in graduate programs in the social and behavioral sciences across the nation and world. These books have provided the foundation for statistical inquiry and thought for many graduate students who have then gone on to study advanced statistical methods, such as multivariate analysis and structural equation modeling. Aiken has been a relentless advocate for quantitative methods throughout her career. Prominent examples include her role as chair of the Task Force for Increasing the Number of Quantitative Psychologists. She also chaired the committee that spearheaded the creation of APA’s flagship methodology journal, Psychological Methods. In addition, one nominator noted the importance to recognize and emphasize Aiken’s contributions as a trailblazer in an exceedingly male-dominated field and that recent an ongoing demographic shifts in our discipline were made possible and trace to the path that Aiken forged during her more than 40-year academic career. Aiken has been and continues to be an important role model for all women and underrepresented groups in quantitative psychology.
Anne Anastasi Early Career Contributions Award
The winner of the Anne Anastasi Distinguished Early Career Contributions Award is Chun Wang. Wang received her PhD in Quantitative Psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2012. As a recently tenured faculty member, Wang has nine published papers in Psychometrika, a premier journal in quantitative psychology. As noted in one of her nomination letters, “Many would consider a single publication in this journal to mark a successful career, but for Dr. Wang to have nine such publications as a recently tenured professor is almost unheard of.” Wang is not just a theorist, but also someone who can speak to more applied audiences and develop methodology of practical relevance in testing and measurement. She has also published in other top journals in the field, including the British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology, Behavior Research Methods, Applied Psychological Measurement, and Structural Equations Modeling. Wang also received repeated outstanding reviewer awards from Psychometrika and the Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics. One of Wang’s nominators noted that, “she has made her mark in the eyes of her peers, not just in their words but in their trust in her capabilities in leading research projects, shaping the journals in the field, and advising on the National Assessment of Educational Progress at the highest technical level, the most complex educational assessment program in the nation.”
Anne Anastasi Dissertation Award
The winner of the Anne Anastasi Dissertation Award is Julia Haaf for her dissertation, “A Hierarchical Bayesian Analysis of Multiple Order Constraints in Behavioral Science,” which she completed in the Department of Psychological Sciences at the University of Missouri. Haaf’s dissertation provides a novel framework to understand individual differences focusing on qualitative rather than quantitative differences among people. Haaf’s contributions have been noteworthy with the publication of two papers directly from her dissertation in Psychological Methods (2017) and Psychonomic Bulletinand Review (2019), and contributing to another publication in Psychological Methods (2019). In addition, her dissertation has led to invited symposium at the Association for Psychological Science and Society for Personality and Social Psychology, as well as being asked to teach how to model individual difference at the Potsdam summer school on statistics. Her work is also starting to affect others, and a number of scholars are starting to publish “does everyone” analyses of individual differences.
Qualitative Awards
Committee: Ruthellen Josselson, Mark Freeman, and Cynthia Winston-Proctor
Distinguished Contributions in Qualitative Inquiry Award
The recipient of this award is Heidi Levitt who has been at the forefront in defining and refining standards for qualitative research. She was lead author of an article in 2017 entitled “Recommendations for designing and reviewing qualitative research in psychology: Promoting methodological integrity” published in Qualitative Psychology that defined methodological integrity and has become a widely-cited standard for qualitative research. This was followed by her leadership of the APA task force that resulted in publication in the American Psychologist of the “Journal article reporting standards for qualitative research in psychology.” This article became foundational to the inclusion of these standards in the newest APA Publication Manual, a project that she also led. These contributions are highly distinguished, their recommendations have been adopted in other countries, and they will continue to influence qualitative psychology for the decades to come. In addition, Levitt has been a highly productive scholar whose exemplary work has set the standards for qualitative inquiry. In order to advance qualitative methods, she has also created numerous webinars and podcasts to make these methods accessible to students and newer researchers. She has also taken up leadership roles as an associate editor of Qualitative Psychology and as president of the Society for Qualitative Inquiry in Psychology, a section of Div. 5. Three very long and detailed letters attest to Levitt’s “substantial impacts both on the use of qualitative inquiry to further knowledge in substantive areas and on the development of good practices in the undertaking of such inquiry.” Another letter writer averred that she is “without peer, the international authority on qualitative research.”
Qualitative Dissertation, Early Career and Distinguished Teaching Awards
(Committee: Heidi Levitt, Mark Freeman, and Cynthia Winston-Proctor)
Distinguished Contributions to Teaching and Mentoring in Qualitative Inquiry Award
This year Eva-Maria Simms is the winner of this award. Simms is a professor of psychology and the Adrian van Kaam Endowed Chair for Excellence in Scholarship at Duquesne University. This award honors her for over 20 years of teaching graduate and undergraduate courses in qualitative methods and of advising graduate students’ theses and dissertations. She developed a Psychology of Community Engagement class that engages students in qualitative research focused on a local community and which is required of all psychology majors at Duquesne. As one of her letter writer notes, it is because of her dedication to experiential learning that all majors in psychology graduate with having had a meaningful hands-on qualitative research experience. In addition, she has been active in mentoring graduate students who speak highly of her influence on their love of methods and their future careers.
Distinguished Early Career Contributions to Qualitative Inquiry Award
The committee has decided upon Urmitappa Dutta as the recipient of this award. Dutta is an assistant professor at University of Massachusetts Lowell. Dutta has made important contributions to both critical ethnography and participatory action research. Her research draws attention to issues in the global south, examining Garo tribes in Northeast India, as well as local forms of disparity, including Asian American immigrants in Lowell, MA. Her work works to raise consciousness about racialized and gendered violence and to produce counter-narratives that have transformative potential. Dutta’s innovative qualitative methods explore the ways injustice and oppression transpire in everyday experiences and become normalized in our society. She draws public attention to what are commonly invisible dynamics and examines how overlapping systemic barriers influence the lives of people in diverse communities.
Distinguished Dissertation in Qualitative Inquiry Award
The winner of this award was Nisha Gupta. Her dissertation was titled, “Illuminating the Trauma of the Closet Among Sexual Minorities: A Cinematic-Phenomenological Study of Existential Rights.” Her study is a work of liberation psychology that seeks to develop an intimate and existential understanding of the experience of being closeted and coming out. The method she has pioneered engages a creative integration of a variety of data collection and analytic methods, resulting in a traditional thematic analysis as well as a film that conveys the existential themes through imagery. Her project models the outreach of academic work and its influence in the public sphere. She is a co-founder of the cinematic phenomenological collective and is currently an assistant professor at the University of West Georgia.