1. What is your official current position and title?

Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of New Brunswick and I hold a Canada Research Chair in Adolescents’ Sexual Health Behaviour.

2. What is your educational background?

I have a Master’s Degree in Clinical Psychology and a PhD in Experimental Psychology, which is an excellent mix in my view of both major fields in psychology—giving me both applied and research expertise.

3. Talk a little about your career path?  Where did your passion for the research/work that you do originate and how did it develop?

I began researching sexual behaviour for my honours research project in the final year of my undergraduate degree. I had no particular interest in studying sexual behaviour before that point, but was fortunate to work with a mentor whose excitement about the research process really sparked my own.

In many ways, it often has been a very difficult area of study because, while most people naturally are interested in findings from sexuality research projects, one has to ensure that the integrity of the research itself shines through and that the findings are not exploited in ways that incite moral panic or alarm. I always have approached research from a social psychological, “normative” perspective, which involves examining the range of responses that appear typical among most young people rather than focus on aberrant or problematic outcomes. Having said that, a great deal of the research that my lab produces has direct education and health policy implications, which certainly helps to justify the efforts.

4. Tell us about one or two of your current projects?

It is hard to choose and I could write reams if given the chance. One research project that I am conducting with Sandra Byers is particularly interesting and appears to be the first of its kind: It is an online survey of over 2,000 Indian parents about home- and school-based sexual health education of adolescents. India is currently experiencing a fierce debate about school-based sexual health education as the federal government tries to implement programs to counter one of the world’s poorest sexual and reproductive health records among adolescents. As a result, most adolescents in India receive little or no sexuality education whatsoever, and lack the most basic knowledge, leaving them vulnerable to poor sexual health outcomes. There have been few if any efforts to assess the factors that affect provision of sexual health information to youth, yet such information is essential for resolving this debate. Policy makers worldwide often (wrongly) assume that parents oppose such education for their children; our data will determine whether and to what extent such resistance really exists.

Another project is taking place here in New Brunswick (with David Clark and France Talbot) and involves surveys and clinical interviews with young people who have recently experienced a romantic breakup, comparing them to those in intact relationships and those not in a relationship at all. Negative life events, especially relationship losses, such as deaths and breakups, are the most common triggers of major depressive episodes. Suicide is a strongly associated complication among depressed youth and is the second leading cause of death in Canadian adolescents and young adults. In fact, a relationship breakup is linked closely to subclinical and clinical depression, especially among young men. Yet there is surprisingly little research about risk and vulnerability to depression following a distressing relationship breakup. We are using both qualitative interviews, cross-sectional and longitudinal survey data to study the impact of breakups on young people. Some people view a painful breakup as a “rite of passage” of adolescence or young adulthood, but we used to view bullying in the same light. It seems critical to us to try to identify which individual or which breakup is going to lead to extreme outcomes, like major depression or suicide.

5. How do you see your research/work in terms of possibly contributing to evidence-based public policy?

Most of my work has direct policy implications for education and health. My target age groups are typically young people, and the focus of my work is typically risk behavior, relationship contexts, and prevention efforts. Some of our work, such as a study I am conducting with Jo Ann Majerovich, is a Canada-wide survey of all public health clinics providing sexual health services. This research has never been collected in Canada and as such, nobody really knows which services are provided and to whom. Without data such as these, it would be impossible to make any informed decisions about the type of policy (or policy changes) required to improve the health and well-being of the Canadian population. We cannot rely on guesswork—as a social psychologist, I am well aware of how wildly biased our judgments can be without empirical data to support our decisions.

6. Discuss any past achievements that were significant to your professional path?  Have any contributed to the promotion of evidence-based public policy?

I worked for many years at the HIV research center at Columbia University’s Department of Psychiatry on projects focused primarily on reducing risk behaviour among inner city youth, as well as young people internationally (South Africa, Guatemala, India). Most of that research was incorporated directly into prevention programs and tested systematically. Since then, my dual emphasis on both education and health has led to excellent collaborations with stakeholders and policy makers in both fields and really, today, there is little support for research in my area that does not have direct policy implications. Our focus from design to dissemination is on ensuring the data are relevant and useful to policy.

7. Describe in a couple of sentences your involvement with NBSPRN and how your relationship with the Network has contributed to your research/work and/or to social/economic policy?

With the heightened emphasis on knowledge mobilization, researchers are required to be creative in their approaches to dissemination of findings and exchange with key stakeholders. The advent of social media, in particular, has added an entirely new dimension to our thinking in terms of transferring our findings and engaging others in the use of our data. The Network is helping me to find innovative ways to expand the range of voices using our research, and to think synergistically in these ways from the earliest stages in a project’s life.

8. Any last thoughts? 

The researcher’s life can be in many ways self-indulgent: We get to study questions that really appeal to us, devoting our life to the research process, and then share them with other researchers who are enthusiastic about the same questions. What has been an evolution for me is to manage the balance of sharing much further and wider the findings that emerge from my work with a more careful and deliberate approach to ensure that the findings are captured in a meaningful way for more widespread consumption. No longer do our data simply sit in journals shared by colleagues—Data need to get to work! It is up to us to make sure that they do.