Two recent ICD doctoral alumni win dissertation awards

Congratulations to two recent ICD doctoral graduates who have received dissertation awards this year. 

Sophia Magro, PhD '23, was awarded the 2024 University of Minnesota Best Dissertation Award in the Social Sciences category for her dissertation "Measuring, Predicting, and Understanding the Consequences of Teacher-Student Relationships from Kindergarten to Grade 6: Evidence from the Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development". Magro's dissertation built on prior work in the field of teacher-student relationships and aimed to adjust for bias in the Student-Teacher Relationship Scale, a commonly used measure of teacher-student relationship quality. The results revealed bias in teacher response patterns across child grade, sex, race/ethnicity, and maternal education level. The dissertation findings also showed that when children have better-than-usual relationships with their teachers, they also have better social and academic competence and fewer behavior problems. These findings represent advancements in the ethical and equitable measurement of teacher-student relationships; identify contributors to and consequences of teacher-student relationships; and inform the utility of relationship-based interventions in schools for improving child outcomes. 

Magro, whose advisor was ICD's Glenn Roisman, recently completed her child clinical psychology doctoral internship at Duke University. She is now a NRSA T32 Postdoctoral Fellow at Northwestern University in The Feinberg School of Medicine. 

Marissa Nivison, PhD '23, was awarded the Society for Emotion and Attachment Studies 2024 Dissertation Award for Excellence in Attachment Research for her dissertation "The Convergence of Retrospective and Prospective Assessments of Childhood Abuse: Prospective Longitudinal Evidence from an At-risk Sample". Her dissertation explored the discrepancies in types of measurements of child abuse. Nivison used data from the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation (MLSRA), which has tracked individuals from three months before birth to approximately 45 years old. She re-coded around 300 interviews collected at ages 19 and 26, focusing on adults' recollections of physical and sexual abuse. These retrospective reports were then compared to records collected from multiple sources for the same individuals to see if there were discrepancies. Contrary to previous findings, Nivison found a higher agreement between both types of reports of abuse. The dissertation findings suggest that the retrospective reports, when carefully coded by trained coders, may provide a more valid and efficient way to assess childhood abuse. 

Nivison, who was also advised by ICD's Glenn Roisman, is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Calgary.