Director: Eric R. Dahlen, Ph.D.
Frequently Asked Questions
On this page, I have provided brief answers to many of the most common questions we receive from prospective applicants. Click on each question below to see the answer.
The most current information about projects in progress or being developed can be found on our Home page. You can also visit the About Our Research page to learn more about the primary areas we are investigating.
I update the Home page of the lab website periodically to provide some ideas of projects in the development stage. In general, I expect that we will continue to examine relational aggression and victimization among emerging adults. I'd like to learn more about the manner in which this behavior impacts college student mental health and how we might prevent and or manage it more effectively. We have a number of students working in the lab who are interested in various dark personality traits, and we will almost certainly continue working in that area. We have recently started to look at cyber aggression, and this is another area where we should soon be developing additional studies. Our work is frequently shaped by student interests too, so I am sure there will be future studies I cannot anticipate.
Lab members include master's and doctoral students who have been admitted to the Counseling Psychology programs at the University of Southern Mississippi and undergraduate students enrolled at the University of Southern Mississippi who are interested in gaining research experience. You can find more information about joining the lab here.
Yes, I typically aim to admit a doctoral student every year. Additional information about graduate admissions can be found here.
Although our program faculty make admissions decisions by committee, individual faculty members often select who they invite to campus for interviews. In evaluating written application materials, I start with applicants' potential for success in the academic aspects of doctoral training. GPA, research experience, work experience, the quality of the personal statement, and letters of recommendation are among the factors that help me make this decision. Next, I look closely at fit with both the program and the lab. In our program, doctoral students are admitted to work in the lab of a major professor. This means that each of us looks for students with research interests similar to ours. Students in my lab are involved in a variety of different projects; however, most of our work is connected to anger, aggression/victimization, dark personality traits, and/or college student mental health in some way. Thus, I am primarily interested in interviewing doctoral applicants with research interests in these areas.
Due to the number of applications we receive and the competitive nature of the graduate application process, I reserve my time for reviewing applications received through the application portal (link available on the program page). Competitive applicants are typically invited to interview. At this time, they will meet with me and other program faculty. This is the ideal time in the process to discuss specific research ideas, fit with the lab, career goals, etc.
Students in the Counseling Psychology Master's Program are often valuable members of the lab. Depending on the availability of positions, we are happy to consider applications from master's students. For more information, see our page on joining the lab.
No. While most successful doctoral applicants have had some previous research experience, there is variability in the nature and extent of their experience. Many master's students and most undergraduate research assistants have not had prior research experience before joining the lab.
Yes, we strongly encourage students to present at professional conferences and submit manuscripts for publication in peer-reviewed journals. While opportunities to do so are readily available, the degree to which students take advantage of them depends on the student and his or her professional goals. Most of our doctoral students present work based on their master’s thesis and/or dissertation at professional conferences (you can find some examples here). Some go beyond this and present the results of collaborative research projects, literature reviews, or more clinically-focused work as well. Similarly, many of our doctoral students will submit manuscripts based on their master’s thesis and dissertation for publication in peer-reviewed journals (you can find some examples here). Those seeking academic or other research-oriented careers will likely be involved with additional research projects that aim to produce publishable manuscripts. Because master's students are around for considerably less time than doctoral students, we tend to steer them more toward conference presentations initially; however, there are opportunities for them to be involved with publications too.
Both our doctoral and master’s programs offer generalist training in Counseling Psychology, and neither is designed to provide specialized training in forensic psychology. That said, some of our students have worked with forensic populations through external placements. Our graduates are well prepared to function effectively in a variety of settings, including correctional settings and state hospitals, but will likely need additional training to work in specialized forensic areas (e.g., conducting forensic mental health evaluations, providing expert testimony). Fortunately, interested students are often able to receive some of this training during their predoctoral internship by selecting an internship site that offers forensic rotations. Much of the research we do in the lab is relevant in these settings even though we do not work directly with forensic populations. Graduates of the doctoral program interested in obtaining forensic internships have not had difficulty doing so.
Our research focuses on emerging adults (i.e., 18-29) and most often utilizes college student samples. While some doctoral students have collected data from non-college adults through MTurk, we are unlikely to conduct research with persons under 18. If you are primarily interested in conducting research with children and adolescents, you will not find that opportunity here. We have had a number of students over the years who were interested in working with children and/or adolescents later in their careers, but they understood that their research focus here would be on emerging adults.
Depending on the nature of ongoing and planned research projects, we are happy to accept applications from motivated psychology majors enrolled at the University of Southern Mississippi. Of course, these opportunities are limited because we need to make sure that there will be enough for them to do. Priority is given to students seeking research experience to strengthen applications for graduate school. Interested students should refer to our page on joining the lab.
The Honors College at the University of Southern Mississippi is designed to allow a small number of students to have an intensive research experience, culminating in the completion of an honors thesis. Directing an honors thesis is a time-consuming process for everyone involved. That being the case, my primary considerations in deciding whether to take an undergraduate honors student are (1) whether I have the time and resources necessary to devote to the project, and (2) the fit and flexibility between what the student wants to do and what we can reasonably offer in the lab. Our recent honors theses have utilized archival data (i.e., data that have already been collected as part of a previous study), and we have found that this makes it far more likely that students will be able to finish their thesis on time.