Arun Nagendra, a graduate student in Clinical Psychology, has received an honorable mention for the 2017 Bernadette Gray-Little Award for Diversity Enhancement in Psychological Research.
The purpose of the Bernadette Gray-Little Awards for Diversity Enhancement in Psychological Research is to encourage and honor students who make a contribution to the advancement of knowledge concerning issues that face diverse populations or that are of concern to diverse populations.
Arun is a fifth-year doctoral student who is receiving this recognition for her work with Dr. David Penn. Arun’s research focuses on African Americans with psychosis, with a particular emphasis on the effects of race on the measurement of symptoms associated with schizophrenia. Her research examining the interplay of psychosis and race is at the forefront of a crucial, yet often overlooked area within the field of clinical psychology. She already has first author publications on ethnicity and schizophrenia in top journals in our field (Schizophrenia Research impact factor = 4.33; Psychiatry Research impact factor = 2.68). And, she is second author on a meta-analysis examining biases in diagnosing schizophrenia among African Americans in Journal of Abnormal Psychology (5.53). She is currently writing up the results of a review examining the frequency with which race is included as a variable in papers published in three leading journals in psychiatry. Additionally, in collaboration with fellow graduate students, she is utilizing differential item functioning (DIF) across multiple NIMH data sets to determine if items on a standard psychiatric interview differ in their performance for White and Black Americans with schizophrenia.