Research Projects and Studies

Mining Big Data to Analyze Influences on Children's Language Acquisition (2021-present)

Mixed methods developmental psycholinguistic research study focused on the qualities and influences of different speech sources and vocabulary children are exposed to, conducted by Arabella Williams, Dominic Massaro, Elma Tudjinovic, Jessica Alarcon, and Toby Baylon.
A large portion of data was collected, or 'mined', from a large database of child and parent speech (CHILDES).
The remaining data was sourced from a large sample of transcribed children's picture books and children's television shows (primarily Sesame Street, Blue's Clues, and Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood).
Total collected data:
- Parents and children: 152,976 words
- Children's television shows: 285,962 words
- Children's picture books: 52,976 words
Samples tested for reading grade level, vocabulary complexity, dispersion, gender bias, and MLU-w.
Preliminary results suggest that picture books in our sample have the highest level of linguistic complexity, while parent's speech to children has the lowest, and children's television media falls somewhat intermediate.
I worked on this project with Professor Dominic Massaro and a team of three other students. I completed a large portion of the research topic development, data collection, data transcription, data analysis, and data visualization. I independently mined the CHILDES database, performed linguistic analysis on collected data, conducted the literature review, and wrote the majority of the paper thus far.

A qualitative study examining the relationship between age and perspectives toward mental health/mental health treatment, conducted by Arabella Williams and Daesoleil Peterson-Henry.
Data was collected via qualitative interviews.
Sample size of 5: two young adults and three elderly participants.
Thematic analysis was performed on interview data and theme maps were created depicting the results.
In terms of my involvement in the project, I determined the topic and direction of the study, wrote the interview questions, recruited 3/5 participants, transcribed 3/5 of the interviews, and conducted the thematic analysis. I also wrote the majority of the paper, edited it for APA format and clarity, examined it for qualitative rigor, and sought feedback from professors, TAs, and participants.
If I were to conduct this study again in the present day, I would attempt to recruit a larger sample with a less biased sampling method and expand upon the discussion with additional analysis.

A quantitative study investigating the relationship between children's television shows viewed in childhood and moral values in young adulthood, conducted by Katilyn Bozzo, Isha Sethi, Kelsie Sudsiri, Samantha Tom, and Arabella Williams.
Data were collected via a survey on Google Forms
- Likert-type scale
Sample size of 42, all UC Santa Cruz students aged 17-24
Data were analyzed using SPSS
I helped form the research question, design the survey, write the research paper, and recruit participants. I performed all of the data analysis and visualization.

Research Projects: Projects