Department of Human & Community Development | Illinois

HCD Research

The Department of Human and Community Development creates research, instruction and outreach programs that focus on positive human development, family resiliency and thriving communities.

Our research program is characterized by a focus on significant societal issues, use of advanced quantitative and qualitative methods, collaborative and collegial interactions and major scientific leadership roles.

A Focus on Significant Societal Issues. Our work could be described as “science with a social conscience.” Faculty are interested in the most challenging basic scientific issues, but they are always asking how this information can be applied or how they can make a difference.

• Professor Robin Jarrett has studied how parents living in a dangerous community help their children succeed.
• Reed Larson, professor of human development, has not only created the conceptual framework for positive human development, but has studied how arts programs, 4-H clubs, and other youth programs can be organized to increase adolescents’ strategic thinking and other leadership skills.
• Joining colleagues in Special Education, Speech and Hearing Science, Dr. Aaron Ebata, has developed model intervention programs that address autism, not as an “individual” issue, but as a family and community issue.
• Among the most forgotten children in the world are street children. Professor Marcela Raffaelli and colleagues at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil) have worked to understand and improve the lives of children living on the streets in urban centers such as San Paolo, Brazil.
• Intimate partner violence is a troubling aspect of family relations; Dr. Jennifer Hardesty has been studying ways to help insure that women stay safe in relationships especially when they are trying to get out of those relationships.
• Early social development and quality child care are among the most important issues facing families. Nancy McElwain, Kelly Bost, Brent McBride and Angela Wiley have each contributed to our growing knowledge about these critical areas and lead model programs in child care and resource and referral models.
• Rates of obesity have skyrocketed in recent years; Barbara Fiese, The Pampered Chef Endowed Chair of FRC, is leading a team of scientists from nutrition, kinesiology, social work, communications, and neuroscience to address these issues from an interdisciplinary perspective—from cell to community.

Using Advanced Methods in Unique Laboratory Facilities. Faculty and graduate students are engaged in developing and mastering the most sophisticated quantitative and qualitative methods available to social and behavioral scientists and to practicing these skills in state-of-the-art laboratories.

• Professors Brian Ogolsky, Christy Lleras, and Kelly Bost teach advanced quantitative methods courses in which students learn regression and linear modeling techniques.
• Professors Ramona Oswald, Robin Jarrett, and Jennifer Hardesty teach graduate qualitative methods that students from across the Illinois campus compete to take. Routinely there are twice as many interested students and seats in the classroom.
• Christopher Hall has a “research home lab” in which family interactions can be videotaped with in a home-like living room and kitchen.
• Video annotation coding of complex family interactions and social skills intervention has been a hallmark of the scientific careers of Professors Laurie Kramer, Barbara Fiese, Kelly Bost and Nancy McElwain.
• Structural equation modeling has become a fundamental tool of behavioral science research. Professors Lleras, Bost and McBride have taught many students how to use the complex statistical software to analyze data.
• GIS (Geographical Information Systems) has entered into the toolkit of behavioral scientists. Professor Christy Lleras is becoming one of the major leaders in using these tools in understanding community and school issues.
• The Child Development Laboratory, a model child care facility with excellent professional teachers, is a significant asset to scientific research with children. The research of many faculty and graduate students is enhanced by this resource.

Collaborative and Collegial Interactions. Professor Isabel Bevier, a pioneering scientist in 1900, noted that the wide-open Illinois prairie provided “no boundaries” and this characterized the faculty’s intellectual orientation as well. Our faculty work across disciplines, programs, methodologies and they work with colleagues across settings, departments and institutions.

• Faculty are not divided into basic and applied research camps. Understanding children and families in context and trying to change behavior is one of the best ways to understand basic scientific processes.
• From her position in Women and Gender in Global Perspectives Program, Gale Summerfield helps faculty and students develop interactions with a wide variety of international scholars that she invites to campus.
• Faculty in this department have collaborative projects with faculty from Psychology, Special Education, Nutritional Sciences, Educational Psychology, Sociology, Speech and Hearing Science, Kinesiology, Food Science and Human Nutrition, Community Health, Social Work, and Agriculture and Consumer Economics. Working across departmental boundaries is commonplace.
• Gay and lesbian families are sometimes viewed as a “marginal” family, but Dr. Ramona Oswald, has crossed this boundary and made GLBT families the centerpiece of her research.
• In recent years, 10 or more graduate students from Psychology, Sociology, Educational Psychology, Kinesiology, Nutritional Sciences and Social Work have worked in department laboratories. Students learn how to work across disciplines and traditions and how to create broad intellectual networks.
• All faculty are committed to understanding ethnic minorities in their research projects—Joseph Pleck, Robin Jarrett, Christy Lleras, Marcela Raffaelli, Angela Wiley have made significant advancements in our scientific understanding of ethnic children and family issues.
• By graduation, about 50% of our undergraduates have worked in faculty laboratories or have been engaged in research projects. This provides students with an array of opportunities to broaden their educational training and gain hands-on experience working with individuals and families.
• Graduate students frequently work with more than one faculty member on a significant project during their training. This is partly because faculty often work together and because students are encouraged to pursue their interests.
• Gale Summerfield (International Programs), Elizabeth Pleck (History), Soo Ah Kwon (Asian American Studies), and Robin Jarrett (African American Studies) hold joint appointments with other units on campus and facilitate collaborations and joint projects.
• Professor Constance Shapiro is instrumental in maintaining ties to Social Work.

Faculty with Major Scientific Leadership Roles. Our faculty are not only excellent researchers and scholars, but they are also leaders in the scientific community. They are recognized by their peers for awards and hold elective office. They are invited to give lectures at major national meetings and at universities across the world. They serve as editors of the major journals in the field.

• The past president of the Society for Research in Adolescence was Reed Larson.
• Ramona Oswald was elected Program Chair of the annual meeting of the National Council on Family Relations in Minneapolis, 2010.
• Kelly Bost, Brent McBride, Barbara Fiese, Angela Wiley, Marcela Rafaelli and Reed Larson have all served as editors or associate editors of major journals.
• Science leadership is also reflected in teaching excellence. Ramona Oswald has been awarded Ernest Osborne Teaching Award from NCFR for her role as Graduate Program Coordinator. In 2008, Jennifer Hardesty was awarded the USDA Excellence in Teaching Award and has been recognized as Teaching Fellow by NACTA.
• Faculty currently serve on the editorial boards of these journals—
  • Journal of Family Psychology
  • Family Relations
  • Journal of Marriage and Family
  • Fathering
  • Journal of Pediatric Psychology
  • Journal of Family Theory and Review
  • Journal of Social and Personal Relationships
  • Family Process
  • Women, Race & Gender
  • Journal of Behavioral Development
  • Journal of Adolescence
  • Journal of Adolescent Research
  • Applied Developmental Science
  • New Directions in Youth Development
  • New Directions in Child and Adolescent Development
  • Early Childhood Research Quarterly
  • Early Education and Development
  • Journal of GLBT Family Relationships
  • Parenting
  • Review of Political Economy
  • and Review of Social Economy.
• In recent years faculty were invited to present at the
  • Institute for
• Applied Psychology
• Lisbon, Portugal
• Cincinnati Children’s Hospital
• University of Rome
• National Council on Black Studies
• Head Start National Research Conference
• Universidad Catolica de Chili
• European Association of Research on Adolescence
• Colorado State University
• Purdue University
• Rockway Institute
• Early American History in Global Perspective (Tianjin, China)
• Gender and Rural Development in China (Beijing)
• National Council for Research on Women.
• Faculty are actively involved in the major scientific organizations in the field including
  • National Council of Family Relations
  • Society for Research in Child Development
  • American Sociological Association
  • American Psychological Association
  • Society for Research in Adolescence
  • Groves Conference on the Family
  • National Association for the Education of Young Children
  • American Educational Research Association
  • International Association of Relationships Research
  • International Association of Feminist Economics as well as others.