Resilience in Research Fortaleza en la Comunidad

Welcome to CREAR Lab, where we embody our name in action: Community Research Exploring Adolescent Resilience. "Crear," meaning "to create" in Spanish, symbolizes our commitment to creating, or fostering, positive psychological well-being among youth and families exposed to violence. Through rigorous research and compassionate outreach, we strive to empower young lives, creating pathways to resilience and brighter futures. Join us in our journey to transform challenges into opportunities for growth and healing. Our research in this lab is oriented towards identifying factors that contribute to optimal well-being and resilience in the face of contextual risk factors, with a particular focus on community settings.

Our program of research focuses on interpersonal and sociocultural influences on academic and psychological well-being across the lifespan (ages 11–65). Aims of this research include identifying factors that may act as protective in the face of violence (i.e., community violence exposure, sexual harassment, interpersonal violence). Protective factors of interest include cultural values like familismo, and dimensions of parent-adolescent relationships like parent-adolescent communication and parental involvement. While our lab has a particular interest in Latino/as in the U.S. and Latin America (e.g., Honduras, Puerto Rico, Mexico), we are interested in adolescents of color more broadly.