Research Teams – School of Education

Kelsey Autin Research

The general focus of Autin’s research is on how people find fulfillment in their occupations and how this relates to overall well-being. Within this, she focuses on how people’s identities (e.g., gender, racial, social class identities) along with their sociopolitical contexts (e.g., experiences of marginalization, economic circumstances) shape their beliefs about their freedom of work choice and barriers to obtaining decent work (i.e., work in which people are paid adequately and are safe from physical and psychological harm). In turn, Autin looks at mechanisms through which decent work fulfills basic human needs (e.g., needs for financial security, connection with others, and a sense of autonomy) that ultimately lead to fulfillment, life satisfaction, and meaning.

Her work is grounded in the Psychology of Working Theory (PWT; Duffy, Blustein, Diemer, & Autin, 2016), which places contextual factors as primary predictors of work outcomes. Core to her work is a value of social justice, and she is interested in populations who face significant barriers due to marginalization (e.g., women, people of color, LGB and trans individuals, undocumented immigrants, people from low social class backgrounds).

Autin’s current projects include: an exploration of how social class and access to basic survival needs influences a person’s desire for and experience of meaning at work; development of a measurement tool to assess need fulfillment; guidelines for infusing findings from PWT research into clinical practice; exploration of moderators in the link from marginalization to work volition; and a longitudinal examination of PWT hypotheses among people of color.

Nadya A. Fouad Research

Nadya A. Fouad, PhD, ABPP
University Distinguished Professor & Mary and Ted Kellner Endowed Chair of Educational Psychology

1. Applications and extensions of the Social Cognitive Career Theory. Fouad has been particularly interested in the math and science applications of the Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT). Most recently, she and her colleague Romila Singh have worked on three projects funded by the National Science Foundation that have examined reasons for persistence and departure from engineering, incorporating SCCT with Turnover Theory. The first project is Stemming the Tide. They have continued that research in a second study with male engineers (NSFGears) to both describe male engineers’ experiences and to compare men and women engineers. Along with Edward Levitas, they recently obtained a third NSF grant to examine the role of gender and race with engineering teams. You can learn more about this project by visiting their joint research website, STEMming the Tide.

2. Cross-cultural interest assessment. Fouad is interested in examining the role of race and ethnicity in vocational interests. Interestingly, she has found over the years that race/ethnicity has a much smaller effect size influencing interests than do gender. Most interventions have focused on ways to promote racial/ethnic minority individuals’ interests in math and science careers, but findings suggest that research and interventions need to examine environmental factors and barriers to math/science career choices.

3. Contextual issues in career development. A third area of research relates broadly to contextual issues in career counseling and career development. Rosie Bingham and Dr. Fouad have developed a model (Fouad & Bingham, 1995) that explicitly incorporates culture into career counseling. Fouad also conducted a meta-analysis of the role of race/ethnicity in career decision making and choice with her colleague Angela Byars-Winston (Fouad & Byars-Winston, 2005). They documented that race/ethnicity plays a much stronger role in career expectations than it does in aspirations.

Also, building on a qualitative study investigating the construction of the meaning of career for Asian Americans, Fouad and her students have examined the influences of family expectations on career decisions. They developed a Family Influence Scale (Fouad et al., 2010) that is helping them to explore the role of family expectations and supports across cultures (including Korea, India, Turkey, Portugal, Italy, and Israel).

4. Competence. The final area of Fouad’s research may be roughly classified as “professional issues.” She has been involved for the past 15 years in helping to clarify benchmarks in trainees’ attaining competence as psychologists. More information on benchmarks tools are available on the APA Education Directorate website.

Current Research Projects

Fouad has a very active research team with 14 students working on projects that focus primarily on topics related to career development and/or cultural competence. Team projects are developed to help meet students’ research goals. Projects often lead to publication in peer-reviewed academic journals. Many students on the team have also submitted proposals to present at the APA Annual Convention.

This is a partial list of research questions Dr. Fouad’s team is currently investigating:

Academic transitions for student veterans
Perceptions of opportunity for ethnic and racial minorities
Meaningfulness for hospital employees involved in direct patient care
Sources of outcome expectations for students engaged in career exploration
Literature review of women’s career development

Xu Li Research

Xu Li, PhD
Assistant Professor

Dr. Li’s primary line of research is the process, outcome, and training of individual and group psychotherapy in the cross-cultural and multicultural contexts. Specifically, he focuses on several general research questions:

Factors associated with effective psychotherapy practice and training cross-culturally (e.g., in U.S., China, and other countries internationally). These inquiries encompass therapist factors (trainee self-efficacy, calibration accuracy, performance anxiety, mindfulness, responsiveness, helping skills use, spiritual interventions use, etc.); client factors (symptom severity, psychological mindedness, etc.); therapy process factors (therapist-client dynamic patterns, working alliance, emotional congruence, group session dynamic types, etc.); and training context factors (supervisory working alliance, peer relationship, etc.).
Adapting and validating important psychotherapy measures for different cultural contexts, including therapist-client working alliance, client symptom, therapist presence, supervisory working alliance, etc.
Multicultural counseling training and multicultural competency. This includes current ongoing meta-analysis study on multicultural competency literature.
Methodologically, Dr. Li’s research has a strong focus on the application of innovative and advanced analytical approaches, including structural equation modeling, multilevel factor analysis and item response theory, multilevel mixture modeling, actor-partner interdependence modeling, multilevel response surface analysis, differential equations dynamic system, etc. These quantitative models can help tackle the complex structure in psychotherapy datasets and explore nuanced research questions that may be out of conceptualization without these analytical tools.

Ankita Nikalje Research

Ankita Nikalje, PhD
Assistant Professor

Ankita Nikalje is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology in the Counseling program at UW-Milwaukee. She earned her Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from Purdue University (U.S.A.), her MS in Cross-Cultural Psychology from Brunel University (U.K.), and her BS (Hons.) in Psychology from the University of Melbourne and Bond University (Australia).

Dr. Nikalje’s research focuses on the impact of systemic, institutional, interpersonal, and internalized oppression on lived experiences and mental health. She is particularly passionate about issues of within-group discrimination and uplifting the experiences of those who are minoritized within their communities and social/identity groups.

Currently, her research seeks to address the issue of caste/ism and how caste discrimination continues to manifest outside of South Asia. She has theorized Caste Critical Theory (CasteCRIT) and is developing instruments to measure the psychological impact of casteism in the South Asian diaspora. Relatedly, her research also focuses on the impact of colonization, especially as it relates to internalized colonization or Colonial Mentality among South Asians.

Nikalje’s current projects include development and validation of the casteism scale; validation of the Asian American Racism Related Stress Scale – South Asian version; validation of the Colonial Mentality scale – Asian Indian version; qualitative exploration of casteism in academia; cross-cultural investigation of caste is the South Asian diaspora; colorism and anti-Black racism among South Asians.

Stephen R. Wester Research

Stephen R. Wester, PhD, ABPP
Professor

His area of research involves the psychology of men and masculinity, specifically the degree to which society socializes men into gender roles that, while appropriate in one setting, may be inappropriate in another setting. Most recently this has involved exploring how men of color, as well as men in specific vocational contexts, navigate their gender roles, as well as the degree to which specific variables may either mediate or moderate any predictive relationship between male gender role subscription and outcomes such as psychological distress or help seeking behaviors for all men.

Wester also researches gender differences in emotionality, the degree to which counselors reinforce stereotyped gender behaviors, and the ethical and professional issues involved in the training of counseling psychologists.

In 2006, Stephen R. Wester was awarded the title Researcher of the Year by the American Psychological Association’s Division 51 (the Society for the Psychological Study of Men and Masculinity) and he was recently named Fellow by that same division.

Current Research/Projects

Wester’s research team is currently working on three lines of inquiry, in addition to several smaller projects. First, they are working to overcome men’s socialized reluctance to seek counseling through the use of role induction techniques. They began, and are continuing with, the use of role induction in career counseling, and are in the process of designing role inductions to be used in psychotherapy. Second, the team is working to understand how male gender role socialization affects the choices made by specific groups of men to seek (or not seek) psychological help. Specifically, they are looking at the role played by stigma, and its impact on help-seeking behaviors of men in multiple contexts. Third, the exploration of multicultural masculinity continues. Smaller projects include a short form of the Gender Role Conflict Scale, as well as an overall psychometric exploration of the Gender Role Conflict Scale with populations of color.