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By Janna Imel, Class of 2014
Last Thursday, I spent an afternoon in Frankfort, KY talking with legislators about the importance of undergraduate research. I met undergraduates from across the state of Kentucky and presented my research alongside their projects in the capitol building. This annual event called “Posters-at-the-Capitol” ensures that “members of Kentucky’s House and Senate, as well as the Governor, understand the importance of scholarly, research, and creative experiences to our students’ educations, to our academic programs, and to the Commonwealth of Kentucky.”
This year, I presented my research entitled: “Comparing Resiliency in Early and Late-Life Bereavement.” I have been working on this current project since June of last year and I hope to have it completed by the end of next semester. My abstract follows:
Grieving is a highly personalized experience that differs from person to person. Typically, reactions to grief do not have a certain ending point or course. Thus, the time spent and method of grieving varies. Bereavement is the state of dealing with a significant loss. Although evidence suggests that there are significant differences in the bereavement of older and younger adults, few studies have been done focusing solely on the differences. The lack of research on this topic merits further study. The purpose of this project is to examine the differences in negative emotions, affective complexity, and repressive coping, between bereaved younger and older adults. We hypothesized that older adults would see a lesser frequency of negative emotions, have a greater complexity of emotions, and use repressive coping more so than their younger counterparts during the time of bereavement. We compared reactions to grief in both groups by administering a questionnaire with the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS), State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), and Marlow-Crowne Social Desirability Scale (MC), among other measures. Participants were recruited throughout the Louisville community and consisted of people who were bereaved less than a year.
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| Janna with her parents and Rep. Tanya Pullin |
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| Janna with Sen. Robin Webb |
Janna Imel, of Greenup County, Ky., is a junior McConnell Scholar at the University of Louisville. She is studying psychology and political science.