Alison Parker, PhD
iRT Research Associate
Doctorate in Developmental Psychology,
North Carolina State University

Alison Parker, Ph.D., is a Research Associate II at innovation Research & Training, Inc. Dr. Parker received a Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from North Carolina State University. Research interests are centered on the social and emotional development of children and adolescents, substance abuse among youth, as well as parent-child relationships. Specifically, she has examined how parental teaching of both positive and negative emotions influenced children’s ability to regulate their emotions with peers, as well as cope with everyday peer stress in middle school. She has also investigated how culture and ethnicity play a role in parents’ beliefs about emotions in the family, utilizing qualitative methodology. During graduate school, she has served as a university instructor, an academic advisor to incoming college students, as well as a program evaluator of public health programs.

At iRT, she served as the Project Director for the MAJORS program, a substance abuse treatment program for juvenile offenders. Alison was responsible for assisting with the ongoing monitoring and evaluation of the MAJORS program involving service delivery to substance abusing, delinquent youth. Currently, Dr. Parker is the Principal Investigator on a Phase I SBIR grant to develop a web-based measure of emotion recognition skills for use with preschool-aged children. In addition, she is the Principal Investigator on a grant to develop a mindfulness-based substance abuse prevention program for elementary school-aged children.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:

Parker, A. E., Halberstadt, A. G., Dunsmore, J. C., Townley, G. E., Beale, K.S., Bryant, A., & Thompson, J. A. (under review). "Emotions are a window into one’s heart": Parental beliefs about children’s emotions in three ethnic groups.

Scull, T. M., Kupersmidt, J. B., Parker, A. E., Elmore, K. C., & Benson, J. W. (under review). Media-related cognitions and adolescent substance use in the context of parent and peer influences.

Halberstadt, A. G., Thompson, J. A., Parker, A. E., & Dunsmore, J. C. (2008). Parents’ emotion-related beliefs and behaviors in relation to children’s coping with the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks. Infant and Child Development, 17, 557-580.

Halberstadt, A. G., & Parker, A. E. (2007). Function, structure, and process as independent dimensions in research on emotion. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 14, 402-406.

Hakim-Larson, J., Parker, A. E, Lee, C., Goodwin, J., & Voelker, S. (2006). Parental meta-emotion and psychometric properties of the parenting styles self-test. Early Education and Development, 17, 229-251.