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Psychology major Joelle Sobin ’05 (Medfield, Mass.) has co-authored a manuscript that will appear in Psychology of Women Quarterly.
She worked with Jamila Bookwala, assistant professor of psychology, to write the paper, which examines gender differences in serious marital conflict and its consequences, and surveys the reported experiences of physical aggression and subsequent injury in men and women within a marriage. In addition to the prevalence of aggression and injury according to gender, the study examines the prevalence according to age differences of young, middle, and older adults.
Sobin’s role included finding journal articles and researching the topic thoroughly.
“She reviewed the literature on gender differences in the reported occurrence of physical aggression and subsequent injury in marital relationships,” Bookwala explains.
Bookwala has received grants over the past year from both the Lindback Foundation and the Institute for Health, Health Care, and Aging Research to study factors related to marital quality. She was among 15 scholars selected from a national pool of applicants to attend a prestigious Summer Research Training Institute funded by the National Institute on Aging last summer. Other students involved in her aging research have given presentations at annual meetings of the American Psychological Association and the Gerontological Society of America.
Sobin was planning to create her own independent study project before Bookwala extended an offer to co-author the manuscript.
“Professor Bookwala had been working on the data collection for this study,” says Sobin, who is studying abroad in Australia this semester. “Ironically, some of my ideas did incorporate marriage, so when the offer was presented to me to possibly be a co-author of the research paper, I took it.”
“Joelle has been exemplary in her performance,” Bookwala says. “She has done a most impressive job in reviewing and summarizing the literature … It has been an absolute pleasure to work with Joelle on this project.”
Sobin was free to work at her own pace and locate her own research materials. She says that Bookwala is personable, which made the research process more interesting.
“Professor Bookwala treats you as an equal. One of the qualities I like best is the trust that she had in me to complete the work … as well as to find articles in journals on my own and to choose relevant research material,” she says.
“She is extremely motivating,” she adds. “She’s all about me graduating with honors.”
Bookwala prompted Sobin to submit her work to the American Psychological Association, where she might present her research at its annual conference this year in Hawaii.
Sobin is a member of the club field hockey team and its fundraising chair. She is also on the executive board of the Pi Beta Phi sorority and tutors for the America Reads program in the Easton Area School District. She wants to pursue a career in child psychology after completing graduate school and is interested in working with children who experience problems with their parents and depression.
She is a graduate of Medfield High School.
Independent study courses are among several major opportunities at Lafayette that make the College a national leader in undergraduate research. Lafayette sends one of the largest contingents to the National Conference on Undergraduate Research each year. Over the last decade, an average of 34 Lafayette students have been invited to present results from research with faculty mentors, or under their guidance, at the conference. Forty-two students have been accepted to present their work at the next annual conference in April.