Examining the Feasibility and Acceptability of Trauma-Informed Approaches - YEDI Affiliated Project
Sean Darling-Hammond, Professor
Public Health
Open. Apprentices needed for the fall semester. Enter your application online beginning August 21st. The deadline to apply is Monday, August 31st, 4pm.
The THESIS Lab (Thriving and Health Equity through Social Inclusion in Schools) features a vibrant team of postdoctoral scholars / staff, PhD students, Masters students, and undergraduate students. Led by Dr. Sean Darling-Hammond with support from Dr. Stephanie Guinosso, we are conducting an array of qualitative and quantitative methods projects using data that we have unique access to. Our goal is to identify actionable insights that can improve school practices and, as a result, enhance child wellbeing.
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If you are selected for this research project, you will also be invited to join the Youth Equity Discovery Initiative (YEDI) Program, a research mentorship program that aims to build supportive pathways into research careers, service, and leadership addressing adolescent wellbeing. The year-long program provides weekly skill-building workshops, cascading mentorship, and professional development training to a cohort of 20-30 undergraduate scholars working on faculty-led youth equity research projects (like this one). Past scholars have benefitted from YEDI’s mentorship and professional development opportunities (including faculty and graduate student speakers). The program culminates in an end-of-year research poster symposium. Participation in the YEDI Program is not required for this research project, but is strongly encouraged.
The 2026-2027 YEDI cohort will meet on Tuesdays from 11:00am - 12:30pm beginning September 22nd. In order to take part in the YEDI program, you MUST be able to attend the workshops at this time. As a YEDI scholar, you will sign up for a PH198 (independent research) class and receive 1 unit in addition to the units you will receive for this URAP project. For any questions about YEDI, please contact Marieka Schotland at mschotland@berkeley.edu or visit our website (https://i4y.berkeley.edu/youth-equity-discovery-initiative-yedi-program).
Role: If hired, you will work on two projects.
The first, "Youth Helping Youth Thrive: A Trauma-Informed Approach to Youth-Centered Health Design," will involve reviewing and synthesizing literature on the application of trauma-informed approaches to youth-centered design and youth participatory action research methods.
The second, "Mixed Methods Research to Examine the Feasibility and Acceptability of a Professional Learning Institute to Implement School-Wide Trauma-Informed Practices," will involve:
(1) reviewing and synthesizing feasibility studies related to the topic, and
(2) analyzing data using Stata to describe participant experiences with the Professional Learning Institute.
For this project, you will be responsible for:
- Cleaning data
- Merging data
- Summarizing samples
- Running a variety of analyses
- Producing tables and visualizations
Both projects draw from real-life program implementation data based on programs designed to apply trauma-informed practices and approaches to school settings. In this role, students will gain practical knowledge of trauma-informed practices in schools, deeply understand the specific programs evaluated in the two projects (including the strengths and challenges of implementing these approaches in complex youth-serving settings), and practice and refine a variety of extremely practical and marketable qualitative and quantitative data analysis skills.
Qualifications: Student must have strong literature review and writing skills, including the ability to systematically review existing social science literature, document search strategy and sources, and synthesize articles for manuscript publication. Students must already have a strong command of at least statistical analysis program (e.g., STATA, R, SPSS, or SAS) and be able to clean data, summarize samples, conduct multivariate regression analyses, and present the results of analyses in tables and figures. While all work will be conducted in STATA, students who have a strong foundation in introductory statistics and mastery of at least one statistical analysis package will have no trouble porting that knowledge over to STATA.
Day-to-day supervisor for this project: Stephanie Guinosso , Staff Researcher
Hours: 6-8 hrs
Related website: https://www.inspireplus.org
Related website: https://www.heartcoreconsulting.com/approach