PhD Candidate Ai Bo to Receive 2019 GADE Student Award for Social Work Research
NYU Silver PhD Candidate Ai Bo has been selected as the recipient of the Group for the Advancement of Doctoral Education in Social Work’s (GADE) 2019 Student Award for Social Work Research. The award is given annually to an individual doctoral student or collaborative group of students, whose in-press or published scholarship advances scientific inquiry in social work or social welfare. It will be presented at GADE’s reception at the Society for Social Work and Research’s annual conference in January, 2019.
Ai, who has trained as an intervention researcher under her mentor, Professor James Jaccard, said that the overarching goal of her research is to develop theory-based and empirically grounded prevention programs for adolescent substance use outcomes. During her doctoral studies, she has conducted research and published in the interrelated areas of advancing intervention theories for understanding and preventing adolescent substance use behaviors; synthesizing empirical evidence of intervention efficacy; and enhancing clinical trial design and evaluation methods.
The publication for which Ai was selected to receive the GADE award was Parent-based interventions on adolescent alcohol use outcomes: A systematic review and meta-analysis, of which she was lead author with University of Texas Steve Hicks School of Social Work PhD student Audrey Hang Hai and Dr. Jaccard. The study, which was published in Drug and Alcohol Dependence, Volume 191, made a significant contribution to the understanding of the effects of parent-based interventions on adolescent alcohol use. The robust and nuanced analysis of 20 randomized controlled trials not only confirmed prior reviews and meta-analyses that found supportive evidence of parent-based interventions’ efficacy in preventing or reducing adolescent alcohol use, but it also found new, rich information on participant characteristics and intervention characteristics that may affect the efficacy of such interventions.
According to Professor Wen-Jui Han, Director of NYU Silver’s PhD Program, “Ai is richly deserving of this Student Research Award. During her doctoral studies she has developed exceptional methodological and statistical skills and she has disseminated her research on adolescent behavioral and mental health problem prevention through more than a dozen peer reviewed publications and professional presentations.”
After she graduates with her PhD in May 2019, Ai hopes to teach at a research-intensive university, where she will continue to develop her own research agenda.