Assistant Professor Darcey Merritt to Attend the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect's Summer Research Institute

Assistant Professor Darcey Merritt will attend the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect (NDACAN) Summer Research Institute at Cornell University this month. The Summer Research Institute provides an intense, week-long experience in the secondary analysis of child abuse and neglect data.

NDACAN works to promote scholarly exchange among researchers in the field of child maltreatment. The organization acquires microdata from leading researchers and national data collection projects and makes these datasets available to the research community. Each participant at the Institute will work on a research project, which will result in a conference paper or journal article. During the Institute, participants work with the NDACAN staff to refine their analysis plans and resolve technical problems.

Merritt focuses her research on the public child welfare system, addressing issues ranging from child abuse and neglect to domestic violence. Merritt's primary conceptual mission is to assess correlates of four forms of child neglect -- emotional, physical, supervisory, and educational -- in an effort to develop profiles of neglectful parenting behaviors and identify any consistencies with parental definitions of neglectful behavior. She has extensive experience as a practitioner in the private and public child welfare systems, specializing in child and family assessments for appropriate foster and adoptive placements.

"It's an honor to have been selected to participate in the NDACAN Summer Research Institute at Cornell," said Merritt. "I'll have the rare opportunity to receive personal tutelage as I conduct preliminary analyses related to distinguishing types of child neglect as a component of my research trajectory."

This year's Institute will host sixteen participants, comprised of advanced graduate students, post-doctoral scholars, faculty, and other researchers.