Dr. Jennifer Shapka is a Professor in the area of Human Development, Learning and Culture, within the Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education, at the University of British Columbia.
Dr. Shapka’s training is in the area of developmental psychology, and she is particularly interested in identifying how contextual factors are contributing to developmental wellbeing for adolescents. To this end, she has been exploring the impact of what it means to grow up in an information age by examining the impact of the internet on social and cognitive development. Her current research is focused on exploring the online risks associated with cyberbullying, as well as privacy-related concerns due to the over-disclosure of personal information online.
At the core of Dr. Shapka’s research is an interest in understanding development; in other words, how things change over time. Thus, she is very interested in different longitudinal methodologies and statistics for exploring developmental phenomena (i.e., growth curve modeling, structural equation modeling, etc.).