Projects based in Supporting Neurodiversity through Adaptive Programming (SNAP) may be an empirical study using analysis of collected data from the program site and /or participants, may be conceptual / literature based, may be descriptive–interpretive—this depends on the student’s interests, disposition, and organizational and planning skills. 

Regardless of the approach and design, SNAP is an activity program for children, youth, teens and adults with various disabilities, and offers developmentally appropriate, relevant and meaningful movement experiences in a Station Based Pedagogy approach. 

Students interested in exploring issues related to and/or experiences of children, youth, teens and young adults with disabilities, and in particular in active play contexts, will enjoy this type of experience.

For this project, students will work in the Developmental Processes in Health and Well-Being Lab to help translate research findings on how perfectionism is experienced by teens and their families into accessible, engaging formats for public audiences. As part of the research team, students will focus on knowledge mobilization through creating infographics, social media series, educational materials, and other creative outputs to communicate our findings. The primary goal is to ensure the lab’s research reaches and resonates with youth, families, and broader communities.

In this project, students will join the Developmental Processes in Health and Well-Being Lab to explore how perfectionism in young adults relates to stress responses. Students will help collect and organize physiological data, including heart rate variability (RSA), blood pressure, and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS; a safe, non-invasive tool that measures how the brain responds to stress in real time).

Students will also assist with basic data cleaning and analyses to help the team understand how tendencies like overthinking and feeling the need to be perfect are linked to real-time stress responses, giving insight into why perfectionism can feel so overwhelming.

This research is cutting-edge because it combines brain, cardiovascular, and behavioural measures to provide a fuller picture of how perfectionism is linked to stress. The findings have real-world applications, helping to inform strategies to support young people in managing perfectionism, building resilience, and improving mental health. This is a great opportunity for students interested in applied psychology, youth development, or mental health research, while gaining hands-on experience in a collaborative lab setting.

Child welfare agencies, practitioners, and scholars are continuously reviewing programs and evaluating outcomes to assess if and how child protection work is anti-oppressive, family-centered, and anti-carceral (vis-à-vis integrating least intrusive methods of intervention). In this project option, students would have the opportunity to explore issues of relevance to frontline child welfare practice and management. Topic areas may include:

• Implementation of harm reduction philosophies in child welfare policies and practice
• Assist with review or development of programs at local child welfare organizations.
• Assess the relevance and applicability of curriculum and educational outcomes in Child and Youth Studies with child protection social work.

This project is a collaboration between Dr. Rebecca Raby’s and Dr. Christine Tardif-Williams’ research team and a local service organization that addresses homelessness. For two years we have been conducting research in an after-school program to understand children’s (ages 8-14) experiences of living in a shelter for homeless families. Our research project involves conducting ongoing participant observation, including arts-based and interactive activities, and we have also interviewed staff members.

As a research team member, you will work as part of the research team on one of a number of possible projects. Projects could include spending time with homeless children in the after-school program and engaging in participant observation, designing and facilitating creative, arts-based activities, and organizing, analyzing and preparing written or oral summaries of existing data. Your individual project will be negotiated at a meeting with Dr. Raby and Dr. Tardif-Williams.

Research in the Developmental Neuroscience lab looks at how children and young people understand language and direct their attention as well as the cognitive, sensory and mental health factors that relate to this processing.

As a research team member, you will gain valuable research experience and skills as you work with children, their families and young adults. These may include using an eye tracker or EEG, administering language, reading and executive function tasks, collecting parent and self-report questionnaires of mental health and wellbeing, communicating with families and obtaining informed consent, entering and scoring neuropsychological data, organizing data files, summarizing data, helping to recruit participants at community events and helping out with knowledge mobilization, including sharing our findings on social media. This project will be in collaboration with Drs. Erin Panda, Suzanne Curtin and Ayda-Tekok-Kilic.

Students will join a research team focused on exploring community-based intervention and prevention programs for youth who are involved in (or at risk of involvement) in the criminal justice system or seeking support in the community. The community partnerships in this research are with organizations that house diversion-based youth programs, programs for youth mental health and well-being, and sport-based youth programs. As part of our research team, students will have the opportunity to build community partnerships with one of these organizations and practitioners. Possible projects may include supporting the research team (through different points in the research process) in exploring facets of the impact of community-based programs on youth from the perspectives of practitioners and youth (e.g., on youth well-being, development, justice involvement), effective ways of working with youth, youth experiences of success, relationships between practitioners and youth, and youth experiences engaging in community-based intervention and prevention programs. This research is done with the hopes of sharing youth voices and above all, contributing to the well-being of youth and their communities. Students may also be engaged in qualitative studies with university students that focus on positive youth development. As a team member, we seek to engage students in possible opportunities related to working and building relationships with community partners, developing and strengthening qualitative research skills, data analysis, and diverse forms of knowledge mobilization. 

This research project is a collaboration between Dr. Christine Tardif-Williams’ research team and a local mental health clinic. We are conducting a multiple-case study with a mixed-methods design, with children aged 8 to 13 years. Specifically, our research project explores whether the application of an 8-week canine-assisted psychotherapy program is associated with pre- to post-program changes in children’s mental health and emotional well-being. We are gathering both quantitative (standardized measures of anxiety, depression and social problems, from parents and their children) and qualitative (child drawings, therapists’ reports, and video-based observations of the children’s emotional states during therapy sessions and various aspects of the therapy dog’s role) data to explore the potential impact of the intervention on children’s mental health and well-being.

As a research team member, you will work as part of the research team on one of a number of possible applied projects. Projects could include entering and analysing quantitative data, coding qualitative data such as children’s drawings, observing and coding video recorded sessions of the children’s canine-assisted psychotherapy sessions, and organizing, analyzing and preparing written or oral summaries of existing data. Your individual applied research project will be negotiated at a meeting with Dr. Christine Tardif-Williams.

Students will join a research team examining how learners experience accessibility in CHYS 2F15, a large asynchronous service-learning course. This project investigates how current accessibility features support student engagement, learning outcomes, and professional readiness, with particular attention to the experiences of historically marginalized students.

As part of the team, students will contribute to several stages of the research process, including conducting a focused literature review on accessible pedagogies, Universal Design for Learning, and inclusive teaching frameworks that inform the study. Students will also support data analysis by examining qualitative surveys and focus group findings to identify patterns in students’ accessibility experiences and the features. Additional opportunities may include contributing to the creation of an evidence-based open educational resource (OER) for inclusive asynchronous course design.

Through this work, students will strengthen qualitative research skills, deepen their understanding of inclusive pedagogy, engage in qualitative data analysis, and support knowledge-mobilization efforts aimed at advancing accessible learning environments across Brock University.

This project is a qualitative research experience that will explore romantic and dating cultures for Canadian teens, particularly how they are shaped by digital platforms, such as Snapchat. The purpose of this project is for undergraduate students to gain experience in how qualitative research is designed and carried out from start to finish.

Experiential opportunities:

• Participating in a research Team made up of a professor, graduate students, and undergraduate students
• Considering the links between social media and contemporary romantic connections and encounters among Canadian teens
• Participating in recruitment of first- and second-year students
• Offering input on how digital platforms have shaped teen romance and dating cultures
• Learning how to search for relevant literature
• Learning how to write a literature review organized by themes and subthemes
• Helping to organize and observe focus groups
• Offering input on focus group questions and activities
• Learning how to code and analyze data
• Participating in discussions of key findings