As far back as I can remember I have been interested in science. The science of interest has changed over the years; from biology, to physics, to psychology, and eventually to social psychology. These transitions were primarily due to outstanding teachers in each of these fields.
My junior year of college, I joined the McNair Scholars Program at North Dakota State University with the expectation that I would be pursuing a Ph.D. in some field of psychology. It was the two years I spent in the McNair Program that instilled in me an appreciation and excitement for the process of scientific research and the underlying mechanics; hypothesis formulation, study design, variable operationalization, data collection, data analysis, and result presentation.
In 2003, I was admitted to the social psychology program at Ohio State University. I started working with Jon Krosnick, but was deployed with my National Guard unit in early 2004. By the time I got back, Jon had accepted a position at Stanford. While he offered to bring me with, I ended up deciding to stay and was offered a spot in Richard Petty‘s lab. I spent the next 5 years completing my master’s degree, taking my Ph.D. candidacy exam, and working on my dissertation. I had one more interruption for a National Guard deployment in 2008, but managed to complete my dissertation in the Spring of 2010.
My graduate school research centered around the areas of attitudes and attitude strength. I worked on a number of different projects, presented at research conferences, and wrote up the research. Ultimately, I left without any peer-reviewed publications, but these fine works will forever live on in a dusty file cabinet at Ohio State.
- Thesis: Creating a False Context: Challenging the Spinozan Model
- Dissertation: A Non-Elaborative Path to Attitude Confidence: Attitude Certainty via Actual and Perceived Accessibility
In 2010, I accepted a job at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. You can read more about this job on my Professional Life page.
