Abagail Horton joined the HDFS graduate program in 2019 and completed her Ph.D. in HDFS in Spring 2024. During graduate school she worked with Dr. Beth Russell. Her first line of research was to understand the processes through which emotion regulation, stress, and relationship quality influence mental health outcomes. For example, during the pandemic, she collaborated with Dr. Beth Russell, Dr. Rachel Tambling, and other graduate students to collect data from several hundred parents nation-wide during the first few weeks of the Covid-19 pandemic. This work was one of the first to examine families’ experiences during the pandemic and revealed that caregivers experienced heightened rates of depression, anxiety, and stress as a result of the pandemic. In 2023, Abagail collaborated with Dr. Crystal Park, Dr. Beth Russell, and a clinical psychology graduate student to collect descriptive data on college students’ engagement in stress management activities, perceptions of these activities, and mental health symptoms based on apparent gender-based perceived barriers to recruitment.
Her second line of research centered around answering the question, “What works for whom and when, where, and why?” when examining mindfulness-based or school-based interventions and applying science. During graduate school, she was a team member and project manager for the evaluation of Connecticut’s 21st Century afterschool program, a nationwide effort to reduce the race-based achievement gap in K-12 public schools. Through her work on this project, she gained many skills. For example, she worked with a large 10-year longitudinal dataset with more than 10,000 students and was granted leadership opportunities to mentor a team of junior doctoral students and undergraduate students. She also worked with stakeholders to develop evaluation products that best fit their community needs as well as contributed to the pilot of new data collection on participating students’ social and emotional skills.
Abagail successfully defended her dissertation in March. Her mixed-methods dissertation brought a fresh lens to questions about mindfulness-based interventions. Specifically, she wrote a systematic review and proposed a mid-level theoretical model; conducted a qualitative study about early childhood educators’ stressors and perceptions of scaffolding children’s emotional development; and implemented and examined the acceptability, feasibility, and preliminary efficacy of an adapted group mindfulness-based intervention (PRISM) for early childhood educators.
In April, Abagail started a position as a Research and Evaluation Manager for the Institute for the Advancement of Community Health (IACH) at Furman University. She is looking forward to continuing working on applied research and evaluation of programs that support health and wellbeing. Outside of work, she can be found traveling, enjoying the sunshine, or spending time with her friends and family.