Biography

University of Michigan - Social Work

Professor at University of Michigan School of Social Work
Higher Education
Andy
Grogan-Kaylor
Ann Arbor, Michigan
My interests are in developing more knowledge about people, social problems, and potential interventions. I am strongly motivated by concerns for social justice. Right after undergraduate studies, I was a community organizer for a year, and then a Peace Corps Volunteer living for two years in the at-the-time remote Upper East Region of Ghana, and doing community development work. These early experiences have been the source of commitments to social justice, and to developing an evidence base for practice, that continue in my work today.

My core intellectual interest is the way in which parenting behaviors, like the use of physical punishment, or parental expressions of emotional warmth, have an effect on child outcomes like aggression, antisocial behavior, anxiety and depression, and how these dynamics play out across contexts, neighborhoods, and cultures. A lot of my work is done with international samples. In my work I use advanced statistical models, and software like Stata, R, HLM and ArcGIS, to examine things like growth and change over time, or community, school or parent effects on children and families.

I have an ongoing interest in developing interventions for underserved populations, particularly among Spanish speaking people, and much of my current work is focused on evaluating interventions for underserved and Spanish speaking populations.