Executive Summary

Research Activities (Completed and In Progress)

Aging, Health Disparity, and Family Caregiving

My research interests are centered on aging and health disparity. I am particularly interested in the social determinants of health and disparities in access to health services, formal support services, and informal social support for older adults and their caregivers due to multiple factors such as age, race/ethnicity, gender, socio-economic status, and disabilities. 

Since joining the UTC, I continued my research on the disparities in access to health and support services for older adults and their caregivers. In 2019, I published an article entitled "Disparities in Diabetes Education Program Use by Disability Status among People with Diabetes: Findings from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System 2015" in the American Journal of Health Education as the first author. This study focused on how older adults with diabetes and disabilities face more barriers to access educational resources related to diabetes self-management due to their disabilities. Using the secondary data, I found that older adults with disabilities were less likely to use diabetes education programs than people without. Impairment types, health insurance, and the number of complications were associated with a diabetes education program use for people with disabilities. The findings can help the health/diabetes educators better reach out to people with diabetes and disabilities and make the program accessible, particularly for those who have a vision impairment, cognitive impairment, or multiple impairments.

Besides, I collaborated with Dr. Cathy Scott on the research topics related to the family caregiving support for older persons with Alzheimer's Disease. I am particularly interested in what leads to the differences in the caregivers' reactions to problem behaviors and their appraisal of the caregiving situation. I developed a study to examine the factors associated with caregiver reactions to different types of problem behaviors of persons with Alzheimer’s disease (memory-loss related, depression-related, and disruptive behaviors). The research found that there are age, racial, and gender differences in the caregivers' reactions to different types of problem behaviors, and knowledge about the disease can only reduce the reaction level to memory-loss related behaviors among caregivers but not for depressive or disruptive behaviors. The findings will help practitioners who work with older adults with Alzheimer’s disease and their caregivers to tailor the intervention to caregivers' needs. We submitted the abstract and presented the study at the Annual National Conference from the Gerontological Society of America (GSA) in November 2019. I submitted it to the Journal of Home Health Care Management & Practice as the first author, and the manuscript was published in March 2023. 

Career Choices Among Social Work Students

As a faculty member in the social work program, I developed the research interests in factors associated with students' interests/decisions in working as social work professionals and how they choose their practice areas(e.g., types of agencies, social problems, and client population). Particularly, I am interested in the roles that the students' socio-economic status plays in their career choices. In collaborations with Dr. Bethany Womack, we developed a research project aiming to describe the economic diversity of current social work students and recent graduates, and to explore any associations between student socioeconomic status, in which area of specialization they work, and intent to stay in the social work profession. We collected data via an online survey. Data analysis results show that parents' income level can influence students' likelihood to stay with social work jobs, and parents' education level can influence their preference of practice areas. The knowledge generated from this study might provide the social work educators some insights into how to better support an economically diverse social work student body and professional workforce and offer them better advice on the career choices at the UTC and other schools. We submitted the study's abstract to the Council of Social Work Education (CSWE) annual meeting and presented it in October 2019. The manuscript for this research project was published in 2022 on the journal of social work education. 

Impact of COVID-19 on Social Work Students and Practitioners

The COVID-19 pandemic had affected many aspects of the social work education and practices with different client population. Therefore, I collaborated with social work faculty and students from both BSW and MSW program to explore some of the impacts to the students and practitioners. 

• COVID-19 & Compassion Fatigue Among Gerontological Social Service Practitioners : Voices from the Field (Mixed- Methods Design) (In progress)

COVID-19 pandemic exasperated the medical, social and emotional support older adults require, which may affect the experience of practitioners who work directly with this population. The purpose of this research is to highlight the experiences of gerontological Social Service Practitioners during COVID-19 using a mixed-methods design. I collaborated with Dr. Cathy Scott on this research and we collected qualitative data through semi-structured interviews with 20 practitioners who worked in different types of social service/health care agencies. The thematic content analysis of qualitative data demonstrated the impact of COVID on the psychological (e.g., “felt fear”, “stressfully”, “anxiety”) and physical wellbeing of practitioners through changes in the job responsibilities/settings, inflexibility of agency policy, lack of agency support, and the reactions of clients towards the changes. We also collected quantitative data using online survey to explore factors associated with compassion fatigue among GSWs. We submitted the abstract of this research to the annual conference of GSA 2023 and plan to write up the manuscript based on the feedback from the presentation. 

• Predictors of the Burnout Among K-12 Teachers During the COVID-19. (Quantitative) 

I worked together with a group of MSW students to examine the predictors of the burnout among K-12 teachers During the COVID-19. Teachers reported an increasing rate of burnout during the Covid due to all the changes to prevent the spread of the virus while maintaining the quality of education to students. A systematic investigation on the predictors of burnout can help schools better cope with future challenges like a pandemic. The preliminary findings suggest that females, pre-elementary teachers, or teachers who taught some subjects might experience higher burnout levels than their counterparts while support for teaching from schools and appreciation from parents and students can buffer the effect of the COVID on teachers’ burnout. This research was presented on SSWR annual conference in 2023. 

• Impact of COVID-19 on the accessibility of students with disabilities. (Quantitative) 

I worked together with a group of BSW students to explore the impact of COVID-19 on the accessibility of students with disabilities. I am interested in how students with disabilities face various barriers in terms of accessibility in different formats of courses (face-to-face, online synchronous, online asynchronous, and hybrid) during COVID-19. The results showed that students who were LGBTQ+, aged 18-24 and had learning disabilities ere more likely to perceive barriers in accessing services. Being white, having a family income below $20,000 were associated with a lower likelihood of accessibility service use. Only students with ADHD were more likely to use accessibility services than those without. The findings suggest that students with different demographics and disability types might be affected by COVID differently. Some groups may face more barriers in getting the services/support needed and underuse of existing services. This study was presented on the SSWR Annual Conference in 2022. 

• Impact of COVID-19 on the experience and career development among Social Work Graduates (Qualitative)

The COVID-19 in 2020 had changed many aspects of social work education and internship. As a social work scholar, I am interested in how COVID-19 influence graduation, job searching, career choices of social work graduates. In collaboration with Dr. Bethany Womack, I extended our study on career choices among social work students, and we are currently conducting a longitudinal qualitative study to explore the impact of factors at the micro-level (e.g., socio-economic status) and macro-level (e.g., pandemic) on the career choices of social work students/graduates. I applied for a Summer 2020 Faculty Grant to conduct the research and was awarded. We interviewed social work students and administrators in social service agencies to understand their experiences and perceptions in the summer of 2020. We collected four rounds of qualitative data and completed the initial data analysis. The finding of this study was presented 18th International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry in the summer 2022. We are writing up the manuscript and plan to submit it journal of the social work education. 

Collaborative research projects with scholars from other disciplines: 

• I worked with Dr. Nancy Fell from the Physical Therapy department and students from the Computer Science department on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) stroke data analysis project. 

• I am collaborating with Dr. Guo Zibin from the Department of Anthropology and Social Justice to work on a research project on the perceptions of younger generation among the older population using the free- listing. 

• Currently, I am working with Dr. Yuan Yukun from the Department of Computer Science and Dr. Guo Feng from the Department of Psychology on a project develops a data-driven approach to enable efficient and equitable 311 services for diverse communities in the Chattanooga city based on data from different sources. e.g., socioeconomic and demographic data, city infrastructure, and historical service requests.

Future Research Agenda

• Disparity in caregiving appraisal and caregiver support service use 

• Technology-based self-care intervention for caregivers 

• Internet/technology use and health care and social service utilization among older adults

I plan to continue exploring why there are racial differences in reactions to problem behaviors and the perceived burden of family caregivers by conducting a qualitative study interviewing caregivers of different racial/ethnic groups. Also, I am very interested in providing more tailored self-care interventions to reduce caregiver burnout and what role the technology might play in caregiver support. So I plan to add some questions related to self-care activities to the qualitative study to get more insights on what kind of activities work better for them in their schedule and circumstance. I intend to involve some MSW students interested in this topic and collaborate again with Dr. Cathy Scott in the social work program. 

Another research topic of my interest is the relationship between internet use and health care/social service utilization behaviors among older adults. I intend to use secondary longitudinal data to investigate how internet use among older adults and their caregivers changes over time and interact with their health behaviors and utilization of services.