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Hello! Welcome to the Biology, Identity & Opportunity (BIO) Study.
We are conducting a study to learn more about how stress affects student learning and how different types of interventions might reduce stress levels. We will do this by examining two types of intervention workshops that we think will have positive effects by increasing your feelings of belonging at school and reducing your reactions to stress. We will then measure the amount of the hormone, cortisol, in your spit! We’ll also ask questions about things that happen throughout your day which may impact your levels of stress or serve as resources to help you cope with stress. We want to find out more about how stress, stress hormones, and sleep relate to your physical health, emotional health, and your grades and performance over the 4 years of high school.
We are currently not recruiting additional participants for the BIO Study. Feel free to reach out to our team if you have any questions!
Principal Investigators
Adriana Umaña-Taylor is a professor of education in the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her research, guided by developmental and socio-cultural ecological frameworks, focuses on understanding how individual and contextual factors interact to inform adolescents’ development and adjustment. Her work seeks to apply developmental science in a manner that reduces ethnic-racial disparities in psychological and academic adjustment and, in turn, promotes social justice. Umaña-Taylor has successfully collaborated with school districts for over 15 years to design and implement large-scale, longitudinal, school-based data collection efforts with high school students. Her work has expanded to include prevention science and intervention programming with a focus on promoting youths developmental competencies. Specifically, she developed an intervention curriculum (The Identity Project) that is grounded in developmental theory and engages adolescents in the developmental processes of ethnic-racial identity exploration and resolution. Her current research projects include TIDES, which is a longitudinal study funded by the National Science Foundation and designed to understand how adolescents develop their ethnic and racial identities in the context of their peer relationships within the school setting; the BIO study (race-based biological stress, ethnic-racial identity, and educational outcomes), which is funded by the Spencer Foundation and examines how the negative physiological effects of race-based stress can be reduced by intervening in adolescents ethnic-racial identity development; and the Identity and Positive Youth Development Across Cultures study, which examines the promotive nature of identity development for adolescents in Colombia, Chile, and the U.S. Her books include:
Studying Ethnic Minority and Economically Disadvantaged Populations: Methodological Challenges and Best Practices (with G. Knight and M. Roosa; American Psychological Association, 2009) and
Studying Ethnic Identity: Methodological and Conceptual Approaches across Disciplines (co-edited with C. Santos; American Psychological Association, 2015). Umaña-Taylor serves on multiple editorial boards, and previously served as associate editor for the
Journal of Research on Adolescence, as a member of the executive council of the Society for Research on Adolescence, and on the board of directors for the National Council on Family Relations. Her contributions to mentorship and student training have been recognized with national awards such as the Outstanding Mentor Award from the Society for Research on Adolescence and the Marie F. Peters Award from the National Council on Family Relations.
Social psychologist Mesmin Destin studies how socioeconomic circumstances influence individual thoughts, identities, and behaviors. Building upon theories of identity and motivation, his research investigates social and psychological factors that contribute to disparities in educational outcomes from middle school through early adulthood. He employs a combination of secondary data analysis, laboratory experiments, and field experiments to uncover effective interventions that guide young people’s perceptions of self, society, and opportunities to enhance motivation.
Destin’s research has been published in scholarly journals including American Psychologist, Psychological Science, the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Perspectives on Psychological Science, the Journal of Adolescence, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, and the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Destin’s work has been supported by the Character Lab, the Mindset Scholars Network, the National Science Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the William T. Grant Foundation.
