Andrea Howard

Dr. Howard will be accepting graduate student(s) for Fall 2024

Research Interests

I study well-being and health-related behaviours (mental health, alcohol/drug use) in adolescence and the transition to adulthood, with an emphasis on special challenges facing university students and facing young people with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. A fundamental assumption behind my work is that all young people have the capacity to thrive across development. This has led me to question the validity of popular but negative stories about youth that appear in the media and are embraced by the public but aren’t clearly supported by empirical research (the “kids these days” fallacy). This includes myths about the pervasiveness of helicopter parenting, rampant mental illness, and harmful impacts of smartphones and social media. I have overseen numerous longitudinal, daily diary, and experiencing sampling studies, and work on large, collaborative team science projects. My research has been funded by national granting agencies in Canada (SSHRC, CIHR) and the U.S. (NIH). I am active in research communities promoting open science practices in developmental and clinical psychology. Challenges related to quantitative methods for developmental and clinical research figure heavily in my work.

Selected Recent Publications (student/trainee co-authors’ names in italics)

Molina, B. S. G., Kennedy, T.M., Howard, A. L. et al. (2023). Association between stimulant treatment and substance use through adolescence into early adulthood. JAMA Psychiatry.

Howard, A. L., & Lamb, M. (2023). Compliance trends in a 14-week ecological momentary assessment study of undergraduate alcohol drinkers. Assessment.

Bradley, A. H. M., & Howard, A. L. (2023). Stress and mood associations with smartphone use in university students: A 12-week longitudinal study. Clinical Psychological Science.

Alexander, S. M., Howard, A. L., & Maggs, J. L. (2022). Personality and alcohol use across college: Examining context-dependent pathways towards alcohol problems. Substance Use & Misuse, 57(9), 1450-1461.

Howard, A. L., Carnrite, K., & Barker, E. T. (2022) First-year students’ mental health trajectories were disrupted at the onset of COVID-19, but disruptions were not linked to housing and financial vulnerabilities: A Registered Report. Emerging Adulthood, 10(1), 264-281.

Howard, A. L., Alexander, S. M., & Dunn, L. C. (2022). Helicopter parenting is unrelated to student success and well-being: A latent profile analysis of perceived parenting and academic motivation during the transition to university. Emerging Adulthood, 10(1), 197-211.

Howard, A. L. (2021). A guide to visualizing trajectories of change with confidence bands and raw data. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 4(4), 1-13.