Research projects.

Dr. Samek has led the Auburn University College Experiences and Beyond Study and data collection efforts starting in 2015 and continuing today.

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The original purpose of this College Experiences Study was to evaluate risk and protective factors for alcohol use disorder onset and course in the first two years of college. Comprehensive survey data was collected from 209 first year Auburn University students (90% white, 62% female) in the 2015-2016 and 2016-2017 academic years. This cohort was subsequently followed up in the 2019-2020 academic year, in effort to identity what factors in the first year of college predicted a stable course of problematic alcohol use that potentially co-occurred with stable depressive symptoms over a period of approximately four years. Results showed personality factors related to negative affect, poor sleep, and stress were most relevant to stable depressive symptoms, whereas antisocial/substance-using peer affiliation, romantic partner alcohol use, and baseline substance use was most relevant to stable alcohol use disorder symptoms. Dr. Samek reported such findings support personality-tailored screening programs in the first year of college to help students learn adaptive stress reduction strategies (such as mindfulness) in effort to reduce persistent depressive symptoms. Reducing persistent alcohol use disorder symptoms may be more difficult if alcohol use is common in the first year and most friend and romantic partner relationships include such use. Dr. Samek later concluded counseling students on the recognition of such patterns might help, as well as emphasizing how relationships can change and mature, and the importance of having friends where you do more than just drink together.

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In 2020, Dr. Samek expanded on her past research of mostly non-Hispanic White populations and recruited a racially/ethnically diverse sample of first-year AU college students (N = 191, 69% students of color, 52% female, 16% LGBTQ+, 2021-2022 academic year) to complete a comprehensive online survey from AU, which remains a predominately  White university. Her goal was to better understand the potential psycho-social risk and protective factors for  internalizing symptoms (e.g., depressive, anxiety, somatic) and potentially co-occurring problematic alcohol use in this population based on relevant theory and recent studies. Results showed that experiences of microaggressions and poor campus climate were directly associated with internalizing symptoms, as well as indirectly through factors related to stress, poor sleep, and academic burnout. Such results underscore the need for predominately (historically) White universities and colleges to take efforts to teach White students, staff, and faculty how to identify, disrupt, and reduce racial microaggressions in effort to promote student mental health and improve campus climate for all.

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Our lab aims to further evaluate what is driving the increase in mental health symptoms in young people via evaluating responses of diverse adolescents/young emerging adults as they transition out of high school, including (but not limited to) through college. We aim to use a combination of probability and non-probability recruitment methods and elevate salient experiences and their relevance to adolescent and young adult health and wellbeing.

 

Our most recent data collection efforts included collecting survey data from a second cohort of racially/ethnically diverse first-year AU students  (~80% students of color) as well as follow-up data from both of these cohorts in 2024 and 2025 (with a total sample size of ~400 and +70.0% retention across cohorts).  We expect that increased attention to collective trauma, and associated negative emotions, may be relevant to increasing internalizing symptoms among young people, in part through their exposure to others reactions to such events via likes, shares, comments online and in online social networks. Specifically, we hypothesize that negative emotions associated with national and global traumatic events, including but not limited to increasingly common school and mass shootings, instances of police violence, major weather events associated with climate change, war in Europe and the Middle East, hostile politics, and threats to democracy represent a novel risk factor for increasing common internalizing symptoms in adolescents and young adults.  Results from our initial assessment show support for these hypotheses. Notably, results held while accounting for other known risk factors such as trait negative affect and experiences of discrimination, which are sensitive risk factors for internalizing symptoms in these populations. Our initial work also suggests negative emotions associated with increasingly common school or mass shootings are especially relevant to internalizing symptoms to first-year students. Some of our qualitative work in process (Samek, Qazi et al., submitted) suggests college students feel afraid of the possibility of a school shooting happening to them, with some experiencing hypervigilance, frustration, and others feeling numb on whether anything will ever change to their frequency. One even commented on experiencing the perspective of a student on TikTok in lockdown when a university shooting  was occurring and how much it impacted them. 

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We are currently aiming to extend our initial work by studying it longitudinally. We want to evaluate our hypothesis in relation to different aspects of internalizing disorders (e.g., anxiety vs. depression, vs. both vs. both  + somatic), different aspects of social media use (e.g., motivations for using, frequency passive vs. active use and its intersection with interacting with known vs. unknown people online), and other relevant secondary outcomes (e.g., substance use, sleep, academic stress, college completion, academic performance, economic stability, satisfaction with close relationships, life satisfaction, wellbeing). We hope to identify potential protective factors and the individual and community levels that may help to offset risk.​

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Ultimately, we  want to study these hypotheses in the wider population of adolescents and young adults in the years that come, and have begun planning for the Age 18 and Beyond Study to do just that. We plan to recruit recent high school graduates from various social media sources via stratified advertising and snowball sampling. Our goal is to collect data from ~500 diverse late adolescents/young emerging adults over a period of five years. We would ask participants to complete longitudinal surveys for us, in addition to collecting objective measures (e.g., Fitbit sleep, steps, heart rate variation) in order to best detangle antecedent vs. consequence vs. co-development, consider and rule out possible confounders, and generally robustly test our hypotheses. We will include robust measures salient to these populations, from their reflections on multiple dimensions of identity (including racial/ethnic identity) to consideration of larger socioeconomic and historical context in which they experience daily life. We hope to provide support and uplift adolescents and young adults who are potentially vulnerable. We want to foster resilience and help young people find some joy in their daily lives as well as safely explore their potential.

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We look forward to partnering with others to explore these ideas and encourage anyone interested to reach out to Dr. Samek directly.