Graduate Student Seminar Series
Ginnie Sawyer-Morris
PhD Human Development & Family Sciences
Exploring gender-specific differences in substance use disorder recovery capital: A latent growth modeling and random forest approach
Women’s exclusion from clinical research has had insidious effects on the development and availability of gender-responsive treatments across multiple areas of health research including substance use and recovery. The accumulation of recovery capital has been identified as a key component in establishing and maintaining long-term recovery and preventing relapse, but very few studies have examined gender-specific differences in women’s and men’s development of recovery capital over time and no study to date has examined gender-specific differences in recovery residence contexts. The current project addresses this gap by examining women’s and men’s recovery experiences using data from a sample of sober living home residents. A traditional longitudinal method (multiple-group latent growth modeling) and a novel machine learning approach (random forests) are used in conjunction to examine and compare women’s recovery experiences with men’s and to explore what role gender plays in predicting stable recovery during an individual’s transition from sober living home to community settings. Using these methodologies in tandem will produce a more comprehensive, enriched, and most importantly, contextualized understanding of women’s experiences in recovery and how they differ from men’s. Results from this study will have potential to inform gender-responsive substance use recovery policy and programming relevant to recovery residence contexts.
Ginnie Sawyer Morris is a fifth-year Ph.D. student in the Human Development and Family Sciences department at the University of Delaware. As a community-based researcher, Ginnie is dedicated to supporting intersections of communities affected by health inequities and disparities, including women, communities of color, and sexual and gender minority populations through the use of innovative quantitative methods, community-based mixed methods and program evaluation research. Her research interests include: 1) partnering with communities to investigate contextual factors that influence behavioral health at individual-, family-, and community-levels, and 2) using evidence- and community-based research to inform social policy and practice in public health. Her current research is based in addiction recovery. Ginnie's dissertation explores gender-specific differences in women's and men's development of recovery resources (i.e., recovery capital) in recovery residence contexts.
Dial-In Information
Please contact Cindy King: kingc@udel.edu
Wednesday, December 2, 2020 at 2:00pm to 2:45pm
Virtual Event