This paper is an admission essay for a clinical health psychology doctoral program, emphasizing an interest in research to change destructive behaviors of pregnant women through cessation of smoking and proper nutrition.
This paper presents the author’s experience in research. Her current research project is the Family Smoking Prevention Study, which assesses how parents influence their children’s choices of tobacco use. The author points out that her research experience shows that she has the ability to contribute to the future of clinical health psychology research. The paper reports that the author has completed an internship at the Women’s Primary Care Center, from January 2002 to May 2002, which was the same place she worked as an interventionist from May 2001 to August 2002.
Research in my undergraduate years began when I worked on the poster presentation mentioned earlier in this essay. As a research assistant, I conducted two surveys on the health and lifestyles of college students, familiarized myself with the current literature on different aspects of health and lifestyles, and prepared a Power Point presentation based on the results of both surveys. The results were then presented in a competition at the University of Rhode Island and Pace University at New York, May 2001. I was one of eight presenters.