Engaging Cornell students to study adolescent sexual health in the digital age

Janis Whitlock and Jane Powers

BCTR researchers Janis Whitlock (director, Cornell Research Program on Self-Injury and Recovery) and Jane Powers (director, ACT for Youth) have joined forces to study how technology impacts teen sexual behavior. Their project Adolescent Sexual Health in the Digital Age explores youth and “technology-mediated sexual activity” (TMSA): how young people engage in sexually explicit activities through digital technologies, such as online pornography, sexting, and hook up apps. The work is supported by a recently-awarded Hatch grant.

As a starting point, Whitlock and Powers surveyed youth service providers, sex educators, and parents to assess their overall level of awareness and concern about TMSA, and to capture what these individuals have been observing among the youth with whom they interact.

To learn directly from young people themselves, the researchers enlisted the help of undergraduates. In collaboration with Professor Kelly Musick and students in her Research Design, Practice and Policy class (PAM 3120) Whitlock and Powers launched a semester-long project to develop a survey that could be used to explore TMSA among college students. Class members first participated in focus groups led by members of the ACT for Youth evaluation team, research assistants in the Cornell Research Program on Self-Injury and Recovery lab, and Callie Silver (HD ’16), a Cooperative Extension intern and core research assistant for the project. The focus groups prompted students to discuss how they think their peers navigate sex in this new digital landscape. The students then learned how to code the focus group transcripts and generate themes to develop a college survey. Once the survey was developed, students conducted a pilot study, generating approximately 400 responses. Finally, the class presented their findings as well as their recommendations for revisions to the survey.

In this mutually rewarding project, students learned about research methods through a real- world project, and in turn their work provided BCTR researchers with essential information that will be incorporated into an NIH proposal to further examine this understudied, but important, topic.

View videos from fall BCTR talks

Videos from our fall events are now online, in case you missed them or want to revisit the events. Videos are embedded below (when possible) and all are permanently archived in our media library.

2015 Iscol Lecture:
Workforce of the Future

October 7, 2015
Reshma Saujani, Founder and CEO, Girls Who Code

2015 Bronfenbrenner Lecture:
The Obama Evidence-Based Revolution: Will It Last?

September 16, 2015
Ron Haskins, Center on Children and Families; Budgeting for National Priorities; Economic Studies, Brookings Institution

View video

Talks at Twelve: Janis Whitlock

Helping Parents Help Their Teens: Lessons Learned about Parent Stress and Support from Research on Self-injury and Families
Thursday, November 12, 2015

Janis Whitlock
BCTR, Cornell University

Addressing scars as lingering reminders of the pain of self-injury

Janis Whitlock

Even after doing the emotional work to heal from self-injury, scars can remain as a reminder of a painful time for many who self-injure. Tattooing has emerged as a potentially helpful tool for people with a history of self injury to cover, and reinterpret, their scars.

Janis Whitlock, director of the BCTR's Cornell Research Program on Self-Injury and Recovery, is quoted in a Vice.com post about coping with self-injury scars. There is a biochemical payoff to self harm, notes Whitlock, "You are basically relying on your body's own chemical-producing capacity to generate a set of drugs that change your consciousness."

Whitlock also responded to the idea of warning youth about the visibility and stigma of future scarring as a deterrent to self-injurious behavior. She noted that, due to the developmental stage of the teenage brain, it is nearly impossible for youth to absorb that kind of message about the future when they're flooded with emotion.

How tattoos can ease the emotional pain of self-harm scars - Vice

Schools learning to address rising student self-injury

"Schools around the country have begun offering new classes and mental-health programs to help stem a sharp rise in the number of adolescents found to be engaging in self injury, especially cutting," begins a recent Wall Street Journal article. The piece goes on to outline the use of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) in schools across the country to offer kids other tools to deal with overwhelming emotions.

Janis Whitlock

Janis Whitlock, director of the Cornell Research Program on Self-Injury and Recovery, was a resource for the "Teen Cutting: Myths & Facts" sidebar on the article:

Myth: Cutting is a kind of suicide attempt.
Fact: Cutting usually isn’t intended to be life-ending. It is a coping mechanism used by young people who are stressed, overwhelmed or in emotional pain. It helps them manage their emotions and feel temporary relief.

Myth: Self-injury is something girls do, not boys.
Fact: Therapists and school officials often see more self-injuring girls than boys, but it may be that girls are more willing to ask for help. In many research samples of self-injuring people, there is a small, or no, difference in the proportion of males versus females. Girls are more likely to cut; boys are more likely to hit or burn.

Myth: Self-harm is a problem among teens but not younger children.
Fact: In a sample of 665 youth surveyed for a 2012 paper in Pediatrics, 7.6% of third graders, 4% of sixth graders, and 12.7% of ninth graders reported engaging in non-suicidal self-injury. Self-harming behaviors included cutting, hitting and scratching.

Myth: Self-injury is a problem among social misfits and struggling students.
Fact: People who self-harm include excellent students and those who struggle; youth who have a hard time fitting in, as well as leaders with a wide circle of friends; and those from advantaged and disadvantaged backgrounds.

Myth: People who cut are looking for attention.
Fact: Most people who do it say cutting, while painful, makes them feel relief temporarily. Young people often do it secretly: In one study, nearly a quarter of adolescents who reported self-injuring said they were sure nobody knew or suspected. Some say the physical pain distracts them from emotional pain, or that it makes them feel more alive.

Schools face the teen cutting problem - Wall Street Journal

Fall 2015 Talks at Twelve

The center is pleased to announce the fall speakers in our Talks at Twelve series. Talks at Twelve are held in the Beebe Hall second floor conference room and lunch is served. These talks are free and open to all. No RSVP or registration is required, but notice is appreciated if a larger group is planning to attend (email pmt6@cornell.edu).

Thursday, September 10, 12:00-1:00pm
Trauma-informed Hospice and Palliative Care: Unique Vulnerabilities Call for Unique Strategies
Barbara Ganzel, BCTR, Cornell University

Thursday, October 8, 12:00-1:00pm
Determinants of Financial Vulnerability in Community-Dwelling Older Adults: A Pilot Research Study
Nathan Spreng, Human Development, Cornell University

Thursday, November 12, 12:00-1:00pm
Helping Parents Help Their Teens: Lessons Learned about Parent Stress and Support from Research on Self-injury and Families
Janis Whitlock, BCTR, Cornell University

Thursday, December 10, 12:00-1:00pm
Spatial Language and Spatial Play in the Early Development of Spatial Skills
Marianella Casasola, Human Development, Cornell University

Whitlock quoted on self-injury in US News & World Report

Misconceptions and misinformation about self-injury can keep sufferers from getting care and effect how they are treated by others. A recent US News & World Report article addresses some common myths about self-injury, including that self-injurers are suicidal, that self-injury is uncommon, and that the behavior is untreatable.

Janis Whitlock, director of the BCTR's Cornell Research Program on Self-Injury and Recovery, was quoted in the section dispelling the misconception about self-injurers necessarily being suicidal:

If someone becomes suicidal, then the act of having engaged in self-injury does psychologically prepare them to damage their body. That piece, for somebody who's never hurt their body before, is not easy. We have a lot of inner safeguards, psychologically, from taking our own lives. Somebody who really wants to commit suicide is going to have to overcome that. And somebody with self-injury has already practiced hurting themselves that way.

The article includes nine myths about self-injury in all.

Myths and facts about self-injury - US News & World Report

Whitlock and CRPSIR featured in documentary and on Today.com

Janis Whitlock and filmmaker Monica Zinn.
photo courtesy of Monica Zinn

"Every single human being suffers and every human being finds a way to handle that," Dr. Janis Whitlock notes in the documentary film, Self Inflicted. Whitlock, director of the BCTR's Cornell Research Program on Self-Injury and Recovery (CRPSIR), is interviewed in the film, which also features youth who self-injure and other experts in the field. Self Inflicted will be released in 2015.

CRPSIR's work is referenced in a post on Today.com on the ways that teens deal with anxiety. The post and accompanying video outline the stressors teens face and the ways they're amplified by social media. Some teens acknowledge that self-injury can become an option they turn to in order to handle stress. A list from CRPSIR of warning signs that a child may be self-injuring is included in the post.

Self Inflicted trailer

Generation stress? How anxiety rules the secret life of teens - Today.com

ACT for Youth supports sex education and positive youth development at Provider Day

Attendees at Provider Day
Photo by Brian Maley

This September, the ACT for Youth Center of Excellence (COE) sponsored Provider Day 2014, a professional development conference for 224 teen pregnancy prevention program staff from communities across New York State. The COE provides technical assistance, training, and evaluation for three pregnancy prevention initiatives funded by the New York State Department of Health. Sex educators and youth service professionals from each initiative came together in Albany to share and gain new insights, strategies, and tools to promote healthy development among youth.

The evening before Provider Day, the BCTR hosted a reception that set a warm and collegial tone. Jane Powers and John Eckenrode opened the day’s events, and BCTR staff offered workshops on a range of topics, including Self-Care and Youth Work (Heather Wynkoop Beach and Michele Luc), Youth with Mental Health Concerns (Jutta Dotterweich), Using Evaluation Data (Mary Maley and Amanda Purington), and Life Purpose and Teens (Janis Whitlock), among others.

One participant wrote,

I found the day valuable and validating. I believe we need all the validation we can get when working in this field. It's not easy, and when we can recharge and gain new knowledge and tools, I know that I come back to the office looking for ways to use the information I have gotten. Thank you!

Fall 2014 Talks at Twelve speakers announced

The center is pleased to announce the fall speakers in our Talks at Twelve series. All Talks at Twelve are held in the Beebe Hall second floor conference room and lunch is served. These talks are free and open to all.

Thursday, August 21
Relatives Raising Youth Project: An Example of Translational Research in Parenting Education
Kimberly Kopko, Parenting in Context Initiative, BCTR, Cornell University

Wednesday, September 10, 12:00-1:30pm
More Body Projects
Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Cornell University

Thursday, October 23, 12:00-1:00pm
Resident-to-Resident Elder Mistreatment in Nursing Homes: Findings from the First Prevalence Study
Karl Pillemer, Human Development and BCTR, Cornell University

Tuesday, October 28, 12:00-1:00pm
Latino Children and White Out-Migration from New Gateway School Districts
Matthew Hall, Policy Analysis & Management, Cornell University

Thursday, November 13, 12:00-1:00pm
Promoting Sexual Health Including HIV and AIDS Education in School-based Programs though Community Partnerships
Ravhee Bholah, School of Science and Mathematics, Mauritius Institute of Education

Thursday, December 11, 12:00-1:00pm
Children of the Prison Boom: Mass Incarceration and the Future of American Inequality
Christopher Wildeman, Policy Analysis & Management, Cornell University

Tuesday, December 16, 12:00-1:00pm
Helping Parents Help Their Teens: Lessons Learned about Parent Stress and Support from Research on Self-injury and Families
Janis Whitlock, Cornell Research Program on Self-Injury and Recovery