This month, we sat down for an in-depth interview with up-and-coming researcher and current graduate student in psychology, Abigail Moore, to discuss her pivotal work in community research.
Written by Kat Brown
Abigail Moore is currently a 3rd year graduate student at the University of Kentucky in the Developmental, Social, and Health (DSH) Experimental Psychology PhD program. She previously earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Cincinnati and, having recently celebrated the successful defense of her master’s thesis, Abigail is now working towards her PhD under the direction of Dr. Rachel Farr and Dr. Jenn Hunt. She has spent her graduate career studying how families have difficult conversations and how juries make challenging decisions, with her master’s focusing on the strategies used during, and the challenges associated with, adoptive families discussing politics. One example she shared with us was a father bonding with his adoptive daughter over country music, which allowed them to better understand and open up to each other about more difficult personal and political conversations. “Getting to see these shared [experiences] lead to deeper conversation is really heartwarming,” she expressed, explaining that they’ve also been able to think about how these examples can be used to help future adoptive parents talk with their children.
Recently, Abigail has also begun work on developing a youth advisory board to better inform how researchers ask questions and interpret answers during participant interviews with teenagers or young children. She has earned the support of the Ashley and Ruth Mixson Psychology Award for her efforts in “expanding the way we measure mental health [in experimental psychology].” This support, as well as her award from the Southern Equality Research and Policy Center, helps Abigail advertise the youth advisory board and provide compensation for their efforts. She emphasized that this support leads to “more collaboration, more improved measures [of mental health].” For her professionally, this experience translates into extensive training in community outreach that will inform her research for years to come.
Within the DSH program, Abigail has enjoyed the “collaborative environment,” expressing her appreciation for the mentorship from Dr. Farr and Dr. Hunt, as well as collaborations with other graduate students. Additionally, presenting her research at conferences has been especially meaningful for Abigail, noting that the work of sharing what we have learned about community engagement research to other subfields in psychology is “really groundbreaking.” Abigail and her research team are presenting at conferences in Kentucky, Illinois, and Maryland, and hope to share the knowledge gained from their research overseas as well. A core tenet of her work is making sure that the impact of research does not stay in the lab. Abigail highlighted that “research is always about going beyond numbers or an equation…it’s about helping [others].”