JGU Health Psychology is part of the Policy Evaluation Network (PEN) within the European Joint Programming Iniative Healthy Diet for a Healthy Life (JPI HDHL). The network aims at mapping policy actions related to a healthy lifestiyle (diet, physical activity, sedentary behavior) and to develop and implement an overarching policy evaluation framework in a multidisciplinary framework. JGU Health Psychology is engaged in PEN work adressing policy implementation evaluation and diversity ("difficult to reach" populations).
Funding: Federal Ministry of Research
PI: Kubiak
Collaborators: Marie Scheidmeir
Evaluation of an initative to raise diabetes awareness
JGU Health Psychology is leading a mixed-method evaluation study of comprehensive audiovisual media develop by the German Diabetes Center (Deutschen Diabetes Zentrum, DDZ) designed to raise diabetes awareness in the general public. Evaluation methodology comprises focus groups with individuals with diabetes, stakeholder and expert consultation and the evaluation of social media activities.
Funding: Federal Centre for Health Education (Bundeszentrale für Gesundheitliche Aufklärung)
PI: Kubiak
Collaborator: Jennifer Grammes, Svenja Frenzel
LifeStress Study
In this collaboration with the Leibniz Institute for Resilience Research, JGU Health Psychology contributes its extensive expertise in real-life methodologies (Ecological Momentary Assessment) to the assessment of stress and stress-eliciting events in daily life. The instrument developed within this project (MIMS) provides a unique way to comprehensively capture daily hassles and stress and is an important tool within the assessment protocol of LIR cohort studies.
Funding: State Ministry for Research (MWWK)
PIs: Kalisch, Tüscher, Kubiak
Collaborators: Lara Mey, Karolina Kurth
Healthy eating and regular physical activity are only two examples of various health-relevant behaviors which require self-regulation, i.e. the capacity to control and modify impulses and to regulate emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. Blood glucose and heart rate variability have been discussed as possible biological correlates of self-regulation. However, research results are heterogeneous. Thus, the current research project aims at evaluating the role of glucose metabolism and heart rate variability for self-regulation in healthy adults aged 18 to 65 years. In addition to interindividual differences in heart rate variability and glucose metabolism, associations between intraindividual fluctuations in heart rate variability and blood glucose will be examined with respect to self-regulation success and failure. The research project is conducted in cooperation with the Department of Endocrinology (University Medical Centre Mainz) to combine self-regulation tasks with endocrinological methods to measure glucose utilization, and with a continuous assessment of heart rate variability.
CARROT - Correlates and moderators of resilience: the role of eating behaviors and diet
This project that is conducted in collaboration with the Leibniz Institute for Resilience research pioneers the use of continuous glucose monitoring technology in conjunction with Ecological Momentary Assessment in the domain of resilience. Links between glucose metabolism, affect dynamics, stress, and health-relevant behaviors are explored.
Funding: State Ministry of Research (MWWK)
PIs: Kubiak, Tüscher
Collaborators: Thies Moolenaar
Determinants of Diet and Physical Activity (DEDIPAC) Knowledge Hub (KH) (JPI)
The dynamics of self- and emotion regulation
The focus of this project is the development and implementation of a design that enables to capture short and long-term processes of self- and emotion regulation in daily life. Emotionally relevant situations are assessed as close to the event as possible in order to examine their effects on the emotional experience and its regulation. This design can then be used to study situation-strategy fit, i.e., which conditions must be given for a strategy such as the suppression of emotions to successfully influence emotions.
Funding: Intramural Funding
PIs: Wenzel, Kubiak
Interpersonal emotion regulation
Traditionally, emotion regulation has mainly been studied within an individual, adopting a strong intrapersonal perspective of ER. This tendency is best highlighted by the exclusion of the social context in the most prominent model of emotion regulation, the process model of emotion regulation (Gross, 2015). However, this focus on intrapersonal ER is problematic given that most of intrapersonal emotion regulation occurs in social contexts and that emotions play an important role in social interactions. Recent research efforts, though, has increasingly adapted an interpersonal perspective on emotion regulation: Individuals do not regulate their emotions alone but also influence other emotions as well as being influenced by other individuals. In this research project, we connect to this line of research and investigate (a) whether social moderates the effectiveness of intrapersonal strategies and (b) the similarity of emotion regulation strategy use in romantic couples.
Funding: Internal Funding
PIs: Wenzel, Rowland
Optimising the assessment of affective dynamics
The reliability of affect dynamic measures is sometimes below the value that is typically considered to be acceptable (α <.70). However, increasing the number of observations in everyday life quickly leads to the limits of what is feasible, as more than 200-1000 observations per person are sometimes required in order to reliably assess some affect dynamic measures. The use of structural equation models to correct the low reliability increases the required number of participants to an extent that is rarely possible in typical projects in psychology (N > 500 participants for longitudinal studies). Therefore, the goal of this project is to explore alternative ways to assess existing affect dynamic measures reliably and to develop new reliable and valid affect dynamic measures that are less extensively to assess.
PI: Wenzel
Comparison of standardized effect sizes on the between- and within-person level
Current guidelines and benchmark studies for interpreting standardized effect sizes do not differentiate between whether differences are examined on the between-person or on the within-person level. Research is missing that examines systematic differences regarding the level of analysis. In a first step towards this endeavor and by using an experience sampling dataset that includes measures of emotion, emotion regulation, event characteristics, and mindfulness, we found that between-person associations were approximately 2.5 times larger than within-person associations. In this project, we we want to conduct a meta-analysis to summarize between- and within-person effect sizes from more datasets and research fields in order to eventually develop new guidelines for the assessment of effect sizes of relationships within and between individuals.
PI: Wenzel