Katherine P. Hazen

I completed a PhD in the Law-Psychology and Social and Cognitive Psychology Programs at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln in 2021 and a JD, with a concentration in constitutional law, from the University of Nebraska College of Law in 2018. As a graduate research assistant at the UNL Center on Children, Families, and the Law, I designed and implemented evaluations of the Nebraska Resource Project for Vulnerable Young Children, the Nebraska Center on Reflective Practice, and the Children's Justice Programs. 

I am an evaluator with ten years of diverse experience designing and implementing evaluations of professional development programs and justice-based interventions. I use mixed methodologies to assess evaluability, implementation, and impact. Broadly, I study the role of social identity in interactions between decision audiences, decision makers, and decision systems. I examine questions about how decision-making processes influence cooperation and support by increasing sense of belonging as well as how social identity moderates the mechanisms through which decision audiences and makers perceive and evaluate decision-making processes. I examine decision-making processes through social-situational observations, survey responses, interviews, focus groups, archival record analysis, and experimental designs.