Gevirtz Graduate School doctoral student Andrew Choi was selected as the winner of the Research Award from the Asian American Psychological Association (AAPA) Division on Students. Choi received the prize for his project “Development and Evaluation of the Internalized Racism in Asian Americans Scale (IRAAS).”
According to the AAPA, the award seeks to “recognize outstanding research that enhances the psychological and social understanding of Asian American issues through: 1) improvement of psychological service-delivery to Asian American groups through program development, and/or 2) development of original concepts/theories relevant to Asian Americans, and/or 3) development of methodological paradigms that promote effective research and understanding of Asian American communities.” As a whole, the AAPA’s mission is to advance the mental health of Asian American communities.
Choi is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Counseling, Clinical, and School Psychology with an emphasis in Quantitative Methods in Social Sciences. He is also pursuing an MA in Research Methodology. He graduated magna cum laude from the University of Utah in 2013 with honors degrees (HBS) in Psychology and Sociology. His research interests involve applications of latent variable modeling to understand population heterogeneity and mental health needs of diverse constituents, including racial/ethnic minorities. Specific interests include factor models, scale development, and mixture models (e.g., latent class analysis) as they apply to identity development, intersectionality, prejudice, and other substantive topics.