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Dr. Katharine Daniel '12 winner of the National Distinguished Dissertation Award
Excerpts from University of Virginia website article by Cindy Orange, MEd
Mathematical tools that help social scientists understand the factors that influence how human behavior changes over time are effective at accommodating a small number of variables; however, Katharine Daniel ’12, a recent graduate of UVA’s PhD program in psychology, envisioned a new way to explore the complexities of those behaviors that incorporates a greater number of variables. Her dissertation on the subject, “Problems with Switching: Investigating the Sequence of Emotion Regulation Strategy Choices in the Daily Lives of Socially Anxious People,” earned her the prestigious Distinguished Dissertation Award from the Council of Graduate Schools, an international organization focused on improving and advancing graduate education.
Her work uses advanced quantitative methods to explore questions about emotion regulation in daily life, focusing on how anxious individuals make use of a wide range of emotion regulation strategies over time. Traditional psychological research often focuses on understanding the effects for the average person, which can overlook unique and situation-dependent effects. Katharine’s dissertation builds on conventional methods by developing new methods to analyze data that are specific to individuals and the context of their anxiety. Her work has the potential to offer new insights into where emotion regulations efforts go awry for people with anxiety disorders, which can inform personalized treatment recommendations.
“Dr. Daniel’s remarkable achievement highlights the transformative power of cross-disciplinary collaboration and innovative thinking in advancing knowledge,” said Christa Acampora, Buckner W. Clay Professor of Philosophy and dean of Arts & Sciences. “Her work not only underscores the importance of addressing complex human challenges, such as anxiety, but also demonstrates the impact of groundbreaking research originating in Arts & Sciences. We are deeply proud to see our graduate programs attracting and producing scholars whose contributions have impacts far beyond UVA.”
“What’s exciting about this work is that because it’s so methodologically focused, the method itself has a wide variety of applications not just in mental health but in physical health, sociology, and other fields that are interested in how behaviors change over time,” Katharine said.