Researcher Interview: Dr. Donna M. L. Heretick

1.     Please briefly describe your current research.

As both a social psychologist and a clinical psychologist, I enjoy several areas of research.  My current project explores relationships between political affiliation and trust in sources of information for health care. Other recent work has looked at topics such as the effectiveness of juvenile mental health courts, workplace incivility/bullying, and other areas of social/relational aggression. 

2.  How did you come to be in this area of study?  

My most recent project regarding political affiliation and trust in source of health care information arose from my curiosity, and then review of the literature, related to how public response to national healthcare needs or other health initiatives (such as responding to the Zika virus, use of vaccines, recommendations for tests, such as mammograms) may be frustrated by political distrust.

In terms of background, in 2003, Americans considered the government a highly trusted source of health information. Federally-based/-funded entities, such as the Office of the Surgeon General, National Institutes of Health (NIH), Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), as well as state-level public health agencies, often are the front line in addressing major public health crises and/or leading the way for other public health research, policies, and resources.

However, major shifts in health care policies (for example, the Affordable Care Act) have prompted political polarization of Americans’ attitudes. While party affiliation (PA) predicts individuals’ attitudes towards health care reform, no previous research has examined PA and individuals’ trust in governmental sources of health information within the current climate.

Motivated social cognition theories would predict approach/avoidance of information in accordance with needs and interests, including political affiliation. Resistance to or avoidance of health care information, as well as policies, from governmental sources could have dangerous implications for dealing with public healthcare within our social system.  Thus, understanding relationships between PA and trust in sources of health information would appear of high importance at this time.  My results will be presented in August at the 2016 Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association.

My research often is in response to current needs and events.  For example, my research on juvenile mental health courts grew out of being asked to serve as a consultant to do a program evaluation for a juvenile mental health court.  I also did similar consultation to explore the integration of lay family advocates into county- and state-level policy-making boards (which were comprised of professionals).  Prior to that, I was very curious about the impact of the 2007 financial crisis on clinical populations. My research on aggression goes back to the early 2000s when I was asked by a healthcare system to head up a community initiative to address youth aggression. As part of that project, I became a research associate with Bowling Green State University and did research, as well as program development and evaluation, with a team of faculty and graduate students which focused on youth aggression.  Our work targeted bullying within schools.  After leaving Ohio, I transferred my interest in bullying among children to bullying among adults, such as in the workplace.  I have listed some sample publications at the end of this interview if you are interested. 

3.     What do like best about doing research?

For me, it is like finding a puzzle and the challenge to try to solve the puzzle.  In addition to the intellectual thrill, I really enjoy working on problems that have social and/or clinical significance and possible real world applications. I enjoy all phases and LOVE to get data in my hand to begin to see what I found.

4. What do you dislike the most about doing research?

One thing that continues to be more and more of a frustration for my survey research is being able to achieve desirable response rates.   Without adequate response rates, the results of a study may be questioned due to possibly biased sampling, that is, ending up with a nonrepresentative sample of the population you are trying to study.  In fact, this problem led me to look for recent, publicly available archival data for my research on political affiliation and trust in sources of healthcare information.  I found one!

Writing up results and submitting for publication can be a very frustrating process. In addition to trying to boil down a lot of information to about 20-25 pages (double spaced) in the manuscript, other frustrators may, at times, be the turnaround time to receive any feedback on a submission; this may be at least 6 months for some of the higher tier peer-reviewed journals.  Also, just as dissertation students find critical feedback to be deflating, journal reviewers may, at times, seem unnecessarily nit-picky and “dense” (Didn’t s/he read what I had?) or dismissive.  However, even if not accepted, reviews from competent reviewers actually can offer astute feedback to help me with revisions in my write-up or ideas for ways to redo the study to address some of the limitations that were noted. We all pray that if the manuscript isn’t accepted outright, at least they will give us a chance at a rewrite, incorporating the feedback from the reviewers.

5. Advice for new researchers who would like to be published?

In terms of publishing in professional journals, take advantage of publications and online sites that give attention to this. 

Here are some recommendations from the American Psychological Association:

Get Published. http://www.apa.org/gradpsych/2005/01/published.aspx

How to Publish Your Journal Paper. http://apa.org/monitor/sep02/publish.aspx

Here are some guidelines from Sage Publications:    

http://www.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/63382_how_to_get_published.pdf

If you have a journal in mind, carefully follow the instructions that are provided (either in the journal or on the journal’s website) for prospective authors regarding the focus of the journal, types of articles the journal accepts, format rules, etc., etc. 

Here is a website with links to web sites which provide instructions to authors for over 6,000 journals in the health and life sciences: http://mulford.utoledo.edu/instr/

Remember, it is our job to match the publication’s expectations, not the other way around J

Sample publications since 2004

Heretick, D. M. L., Russell, J. A. (2013). The impact of juvenile mental health court on recidivism among youth. Journal of Juvenile Justice, 3(1), 1-15. http://www.journalofjuvjustice.org/JOJJ0301/epub.htm

Heretick, D. M. L. (2013).  Clinicians’ reports of the impact of the 2008 financial crisis on mental health clients. Journal of Social, Behavioral, and Health Sciences, 7(1). http:// www. publishing.waldenu.edu/jsbhs/vol7/iss1/

Heretick, D. (2011, Oct. 19).  Recognizing and confronting workplace bullying. APA Psychologically Healthy Workplace Program Good Company Newsletter. http://www.phwa.org/resources/goodcompany/newsletter/

Boxer, P., Musher-Eizenman, D., Dubow, E.F., Danner, S., & Heretick, D.M.L. (2006). Assessing teachers' perceptions for school-based aggression prevention programs: Applying a cognitive-ecological framework. Psychology in the Schools, 43(3), 331-344.

Boxer, P., Goldstein, S.E., Musher-Eizenman, D., Dubow, E.F., & Heretick, D.M.L. (2005). Developmental issues in school-based aggression Prevention from a social-cognitive perspective. The Journal of Primary Prevention, 26(5), 383-400.

Musher-Eizenman, D., Boxer, P., Danner, S., Dubow, E.F., Goldstein, S.E., & Heretick, D.M.L. (2004). Social-cognitive mediators of the relation of environmental and emotion regulation factors to children’s aggression. Aggressive Behavior, 30, 389-408.

Rewriting Your Dissertation into an Article: Methodology

We are now into Chapter 3 of your dissertation, this needs to be cut down to just a couple of pages for an article. It is helpful to go to the APA manual and read the section on methodology and look at their examples. You also might want to read a recent article with similar methodology to yours. When you are ready, start with an outline, which will look something like this:

Method

               Participants

               Materials

               Procedure

Remember, your method section must be in sufficient detail that someone else can replicate your study based on your description. Therefore, each section needs to be written in detail, however, note that there are fewer sections than in your dissertation; so some things will need to be included in a sentence or two, such as a brief mention of the approval by the IRB (give approval number).

 The next section in your paper is the results, we will examine this in a future post.

Researcher Interview: Dr. Michael Brunet

1. Please briefly describe your current research. 

My current area of research is in the realm of eating disorders in the physically active and the physiological implications that follow.  

2 How did you come to be in this area of study? 

I personally battled with an eating disorder and I wanted to know more about the pathology and educate others about it.  There is a notion that all people who have eating disorders are anorexic but this simply is not the case.  It is a disease that can stem from so many different things resulting in a mindset that sometimes cannot be reversed.  I have dealt with so many athletes who battle pathological eating patterns but are scared to say anything about it in fear that they may be looked at differently or benched.  My clinical research tried to sensitize those in this realm to the prevalence and consequences in order to initiate a dialogue.  This in turn which would create a safe environment for both the physically active and coaches to discuss in an open forum without fear of repercussion.  

3. What do like best about doing research? 

I personally like conducting research because you get to see information that no one else does and you get to see it first.  In other words, when you are active in research you get to see the answers to the investigative questions before anyone else does and that makes you, even for a brief moment, the expert on the given topic.  And that is very cool! 

4. What do you dislike the most about doing research? 

The component that I dislike most about the process is time.  The amount of time that it takes to get from the initial research question to the answer and the time that it takes to publish the process.  Some investigators never get the answer that they are looking for even after a lifetime of work and this can be a big deterrent to even begin a new project.    

5. Advice for new researchers who would like to be published? 

The best advice that I can give a new researcher is to be patient and resilient.  Let truth, transparency, rigor and resilience guide your research.  Every protocol will have its issues but being persistent and staying true to the initial research question should provide the route to discovery.  Sometimes the best researchers are not the ones that are smarter, but the ones that simply won’t walk away from the project.  Look at it this way, if it were easy everyone would be doing it!    

Rewriting Your Dissertation into an Article: Literature

Reducing your 50-75 pages of Chapter 2 to a couple pages of literature review in an article is a very daunting prospect! I suggest beginning by thinking through your key concepts/ variables. What does your reader absolutely have to know about to understand your study? Then write these down as the beginning of an outline for your article. My guess is it will look something like this:

             Intro

             Theory

             Variable 1

             Variable 2

             Gap in the literature

With your outline as a map, now take each section individually and think about what is the most important literature you need to include? You do not have to do an exhaustive review, but you do need to show you understand the literature. You may find it helpful to treat each section as a summary of your literature on the topic in c. 2. Remember, you should not have more than five pages or so of literature, so keep to the essentials. Do a first draft and let it set for a day or two, then go back and see if you can eliminate any nonessential sentences. Have someone else read it for coherence, does it make sense to him or her, and make an argument for your study? Be sure you end the literature review sections with a couple of sentences emphasizing the gap you are addressing and why your study is needed. Mentioning your research questions helps the reader know where you are going.

The next section is your methodology, and we will discuss in a future post.

Rewriting Your Dissertation into an Article

One of the most common questions I receive, as a journal editor, is how do I make my dissertation into an article? This is the first in a series in which I will discuss this issue and offer some suggestions on how to approach this difficult task.

Let's review a few basics of the differences between a dissertation and a published journal article. An article, based on your project will be much shorter than your original dissertation. While a dissertation is often between 100-200 pages, a manuscript for a journal article is rarely over 30 double-spaced pages. A dissertation must exhaustively review the literature, however, the literature in an article is provided to put the study into context; the key issue is to lead the reader to clearly see the need for your study and the gap you are addressing. Much of the information in a dissertation is repeated throughout the paper- it can be characterized more as a book, a journal article should be succinct and to the point. So a few issues we have identified: your article should only have enough literature to put it into context, information should not be repeated frequently, and it should be succinct. Remember the basis of a journal article is the APA manual, so use the format it describes. Do check the journal's website for any exceptions it might prefer over the APA manual.

The first step, I recommend, is to do an outline of the project in an article format. Typically, this will be the following:

Cover page (title, your name, affiliation, and author notes),

Abstract (check journal requirements- typically 200-250 words). Keywords

Body of paper

Title of paper

(1-2 pgs) Introduce the need for the study (why should we care about the topic?)

(2-5 pgs) Literature review discussing variables

             Method

                           Participants

                           Materials

                           Procedure

             Results

             Discussion

             References 

Next time, we will start cutting down your literature for the paper.