Division 5 of APA offers eight annual awards to recognize the contribution of members to qualitative and quantitative methods in psychology. Nominations for awards are posted in The Score, the SQIP newsletter, and the Division 5 website. This year, seven awards were made, which includes co-winners for the Anne Anastasi Dissertation Award. At a virtual awards ceremony organized by Division 5 and held in conjunction with the APA 2022 Annual Convention, all winners will be recognized.
Qualitative Awards
Committee: James Christopher Head (chair), Heidi Levitt, and Deborah Tolman
Distinguished Dissertation in Qualitative Inquiry Award Winner:
Erin Toolis, PhD
Toolis’ dissertation, Museums as sites of social change: Exploring processes of placemaking and barriers to access and participation for underrepresented communities, is innovative and rigorous. Taking a mixed-methods approach, Toolis used ethnography, surveys, and focus groups to examine a museum as a potential site for facilitating civic engagement with historically marginalized peoples. In the words of Phil Hammack, Toolis’ “use of qualitative methods (is) exceptional…from a technical perspective,” and her commitment to diversity and social justice is “laudable.”
Distinguished Early Career Contributions in Qualitative Inquiry Award Winner:
Zed Zhipeng Gao, PhD
Since earning his PhD in 2018, Gao has made valuable contributions to qualitative inquiry, specifically by illuminating theoretical, historical, and ideological dimensions of investigatory processes. He has published extensively, has received many awards for his scholarship, and promotes qualitative inquiry in a variety of disciplines and scholarly communities. In the words of Dr. Louise Sundararajan, “Dr. Gao applies multiple qualitative methods, including ethnography, archival research, discourse analysis and narrative analysis to enrich our understanding of psychology in everyday cultural contexts” and “demonstrates the usefulness of qualitative methods in understanding the symbolic, holistic nature of culture.”
Distinguished Contributions to Teaching and Mentoring in Qualitative Inquiry Award Winner: Ram Mahalingam, PhD
As a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, Mahalingam has been teaching for over twenty years. In that time, he has impacted his students with his engaged and personal approach to teaching. In addition to promoting qualitative approaches to psychological inquiry in his teaching and mentoring, he has regularly produced pedagogical scholarship, published qualitative training materials, and led qualitatively-focused educational workshops. In the words of Patricia A. Reuter-Lorenz, “Professor Mahalingam has established an outstanding record of impactful teaching and mentoring of students in varied courses, resulting in a generation of students informed (and changed) through qualitative approaches to psychology.”
Distinguished Contributions in Qualitative Inquiry Winner: Abigail J. Stewart, PhD
Stewart is a Distinguished University Professor of Psychology and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan. Throughout her career, she has contributed to the field of qualitative inquiry immensely. She has published extensively, has made a profound impact in several scholarly fields, and has been instrumental in ushering in a new generation of qualitative researchers. In the words of Dr. Patricia A. Reuter-Lorenz, “Abby’s early and consistent work in the field of qualitative research has laid the groundwork for future generations of scholars to build on in universities and institutions across the world. She is one of the key scholars to develop the narrative study of lives” and her “reach and support for those who have wanted to pursue qualitative research cannot be overstated.”
Quantitative Awards
Committee: Rochelle Michel (chair), Qiwei He and Amy Schmidt
Anne Anastasi Dissertation Award (co-winner): Jason Rights, PhD
Rights received his PhD in 2019 from Vanderbilt University in quantitative methods. His dissertation, On the common but problematic specification of conflated random slopes in multilevel models, he identifies and resolves key aspects of conflation in order to fix problems in the specification and interpretation of multilevel models used in practice. Given the widespread usage of multilevel models, Rights’ dissertation is of high practical significance to the field. In addition, he developed a comprehensive typology of different kinds of conflation that can arise in fitted multilevel models. Rights’ dissertation is presently being revised and resubmitted for publication in Multivariate Behavioral Research and should be influential for applied practice for clarifying to applied researchers what multilevel model specifications they can use for more accurate inferences and substantive interpretation.
Anne Anastasi Dissertation Award (co-winner): Tianjun Sun, PhD
Sun received her PhD in industrial and organizational psychology from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2021. In her dissertation, Artificial intelligence powered personality assessment: A multidimensional psychometric natural language processing perspective, she examined novel methods for leveraging artificial intelligence, natural language processing, machine learning, and automation to systematically get personality-related information from textual data. Sun connected the five-factor (or Big Five) model with natural language processing from two perspectives: 1) a construct validity perspective—degree to which information extracted from textual data reflects personality constructs, and 2) an application perspective—ability to elicit personality-relevant information from text in line with psychometric principles. Sun programmed a chatbot to “talk” with her study participants and then used natural language processing and machine learning to extract scores on personality dimensions from the participants’ responses. Her dissertation informs personality research by an increased understanding of how language expressions can reflect underlying personality traits and how personality can manifest into word uses or topic choices.
Anne Anastasi Distinguished Early Career Contribution Award: Jolynn Pek, PhD
Pek received her PhD in quantitative psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2012. Pek’s quantitative research contributions focus on quantifying different sources of uncertainty in multivariate latent variable models. Her work includes new developments in statistical theory, methodological reviews, and software and graphical implementations. In addition to her quantitative research, Pek’s work has also served as a bridge between quantitative and substantive research, promoting and encouraging sound methodological practice in social and behavior science research.
As of this nomination, Pek has published 34 peer-reviewed papers, 19 of these papers are in quantitative methods journals, with four appearing in Psychological Methods. Another four papers appear in Multivariate Behavioral Research, two in Structural Equation Modeling, and one each in Psychometrika and Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics. She has been first author on all but four of these papers. Pek has received a number of awards and distinctions since earning her PhD, including the Association of Psychological Science’s Rising Star Award (2017), an elected member of the Society of Multivariate Experimental Psychology (2017), and a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (2020).
No nominations were received for the Jacob Cohen Award for Distinguished Contributions to Teaching and Mentoring or the Samuel J. Messick Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions.
Next Year’s Awards
The deadline for next years’ awards will be the first Monday in December (December 5, 2022). I encourage you to mark your calendars, spread the word, and consider nominating a recent graduate, early career professional, or other well-deserving colleague.