PRYDE Scholar Audry Hong receives the BCTR Roberta M. Berns ’65 Memorial Research Award

PRYDE Scholar Audry Hong ‘22

By Sheri Hall for the BCTR

Audry Hong ‘22 was awarded the Roberta M. Berns ’65 Memorial Research Award for her contributions to research on how parents and teens use technology to communicate. The award will fund her continued contributions to create an intervention to help parents use technology for difficult conversations with teens.

Hong is working with a research team at the BCTR’s ACT for Youth Center for Community Action to examine how parents and teens use technology to communicate about sensitive topics, such as sexuality. The team is developing a research-based curriculum and then testing it to see whether technology makes it easier for parents to have difficult conversations with their teenaged children.

To date, Hong has conducted a comprehensive literature review to help the ACT for Youth research team understand the current evidence on technology and parent/child communication. She is also collaborating with the team to develop interview and focus group protocols for qualitative data collection. In the next phase of the project, she will be involved in conducting focus groups and interviews, then coding and analyzing the qualitative findings from those sessions. Ultimately, the research team will design and test an intervention to help parents use technology to communicate about difficult topics with teens.

“Audry has been a valuable member of our team and her contributions will benefit each phase of the project from start to finish,” said Jane Powers, director of ACT for Youth. “She will continue to work with us this summer when we plan to conduct the focus groups with youth and key informant interviews with parents. Having Audry’s support for this project has truly strengthened this effort.”

Hong will also contribute to a research project in collaboration with ACT for Youth, Weil Cornell Medical College and the Cornell Law School called “Advancing the health of refugees by increasing knowledge of legal rights through digital tools.” She will assist with interview transcription, and qualitative coding and analysis.

Hong is currently a junior in the College of Human Ecology majoring in global and public health sciences with minors in english and health equity.

This Roberta M. Berns ’65 Memorial Research Award provides financial assistance to an undergraduate student working with a BCTR faculty member on a research project, which may take place during an academic semester or over a summer.

Berns awardee Hong ’22 will continue research on teen/parent communication - BCTR