UConn Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) has announced the recipients of the Spring 2017 Scholarship   Facilitation Fund (SFF) Awards. Dr. Caitlin Elsaesser was awarded funds to conduct research on “Advancing Knowledge of the Consequences of Youth Violence Exposure”. The SFF program offers support to faculty research, scholarly activities, creative works, and interdisciplinary initiatives. These competitive awards provide up to $2,000 to assist faculty in the initiation, completion, or advancement of these projects. Thirty-one faculty received awards for the spring 2017 semester.

Dr. Elsaesser’s study will focus on better identifying the consequences of adolescent victimization. While it has been established that exposure to various forms of victimization (e.g., child maltreatment, witnessed community violence and family violence) are linked to negative outcomes, youth experience distinct responses to trauma. There is a limited understanding of why victimization results in particular outcomes, in part because longitudinal data on multiple forms of violence is difficult to collect. Her study will use LONGSCAN dataset, and innovative dataset that contains rich data on multiple forms of violence over adolescence. The study will explore three research questions: 1) How does an adolescent’s relationship to the victim of witnessed violence influence outcomes? 2)  How does early childhood maltreatment influence adolescent response to witnessed violence? and 3) Are particular family and school protective factors more salient for preventing adverse adolescent outcomes in response to particular forms of victimization?

Caitlin Elsaesser, Ph.D.