Whitney Skaggs Headshot

Author: Whitney Skaggs | Majors: Psychology and Biology

My name is Whitney Skaggs, and I majored in Psychology and Biology in the Fulbright College of Arts here at the University of Arkansas. I conducted my research in the Psychology department under the supervision of Dr. Grant Shields in the ASCAN lab (Arkansas’s Stress, Cognition, and Affective Neuroscience Lab). I started my project in the fall of 2021 and defended my thesis in the spring of 2022. In the coming year, I plan to continue working on my paper with Dr. Shields in the hope of getting my research published in a reputable journal.

In the spring of 2020, I set out to find a research lab where I felt like I would fit. I started by listing some of the areas in Psychology that I was most interested in and could see myself researching for an extended period of time. I then used this list to look at the research labs on campus that studied these areas and others that were related in some way. By doing this I was able to narrow down which research labs I wanted to meet with, see what kind of studies they were doing or have done in the past, and see if I would be a good fit. I talked to a couple of professors before I decided that Dr. Shields and ASCAN lab were the best fit for me. Once I joined the lab, Dr. Shields was a big part in helping me decide exactly what kind of research I wanted to do with stress. He let me bounce ideas off him while also providing me with past research to aid in my decision-making process.

I decided to study stress and the effects of coping in college students because stress is a big part of college for most students. I wanted to see if possibly certain types of coping changed how much stress students experienced. Before starting this project, I did not fully understand the differing types of stress and how they can affect your health (especially your mental health). The two types of stress that I have learned a lot about are independent and dependent stress. Independent stress is something you have no control (i.e., losing your job because the company shut down), and dependent stress is something you do have control over (i.e., losing your job because you showed up late every day). Dependent stress has not been studied extensively and it is a big factor in stress among college students, so I chose to focus on this type for my study. I have also learned that there are two major types of coping, emotion-focused and problem-focused. These coping styles have been studied in relation to many other areas of psychology but had never been looked at with dependent stress.

We found that although various coping styles (e.g., behavioral disengagement and mental disengagement) were related to the occurrence of dependent life stressors concurrently, the use of active coping or acceptance coping was each prospectively associated with less dependent life stressors. In other words, dealing with stress in certain ways can reduce the amount we experience at later timepoints. I believe these findings can have a real impact on the way college students learn to manage their stress.

During my research, at times I was unsure of where to find resources that I may need or supplemental research to aid in how I conducted my study, but my research mentor (Dr. Shields) was always able to help me navigate through each problem that came. He is the one that guided me in applying for the Honors College Research Grant that has allowed me to pay participants for participating in my study and allow me to spend as much time as I need on it.

In this coming year, I will continue doing supplemental research to help with editing and polishing my paper. After I have my paper in a great spot, I will start the process of trying to get it published in a journal of Psychology so that my work may help others.