Research
Outside the dissertation, I work on two questions: what adolescent vaping signals about other substance use, and how parental migration relates to delinquency.
As in the dissertation, both projects look past a single measurement or a group average to see how patterns differ over time and across subgroups.
Research area
Two studies of US 12th-grade students on how nicotine vaping relates to smoking and to other substance use.
As adolescent vaping declined, it became increasingly differentiated by concurrent non-tobacco substance use rather than by cigarette smoking. Screening and prevention should assess polysubstance use, not smoking alone.
“Is Adolescent Nicotine Vaping Increasingly a Marker of Broader Substance Use? A Temporal Block-Shapley Analysis of US 12th-Grade Students, 2017–2024.”
After matching, past-month smoking probability was 4.3% among post-ENDS youth versus 17.9% among pre-ENDS youth, with a sixteen-fold spread across ENDS-use subgroups.
“Adolescent Cigarette Smoking Before and After the Proliferation of Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems: A Period-Based Matching Design.”
Research area
China’s internal migration leaves tens of millions of children behind in rural households while one or both parents work in cities. I began this work in my M.Phil. thesis at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. I ask not whether these children fare worse on average, but which kinds of parental absence matter and which strains are linked to delinquency.
Adolescents with one migrant parent, not two, reported higher expected delinquency than those with no migrant parent. Migration status conditions which strains link to delinquency.
“When One Migrant Parent Matters More Than Two: Parental Migration, Social Strain, and Delinquency among Adolescents in Rural China.”
“Exploring the Gendered Association Between Social Strain, Strain-Induced Negative Emotions, and Delinquency among Left-Behind Children in Rural China: A Test of General Strain Theory.”
Talks
With Riley Tucker. Funded by the Penn State Social Science Research Institute.
Seed grants from Penn State’s Center for Social Data Analytics (C-SODA) and Criminal Justice Research Center, an RGSO Dissertation Support Award, a Research Enhancement Award, and an NSF EITM scholarship at the University of Michigan. Amounts and dates are on the CV.