jennifer b. unger

Jennifer B. Unger is an Assistant Professor of Preventive Medicine.

What kind of research do you conduct?

My research focuses on the psychological, social, and cultural factors that influence adolescents' decisions about behaviors that impact their health, such as smoking, alcohol use, physical activity, and unprotected sex. Through the USC Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center (TTURC), I am analyzing data from two large smoking prevention studies in Los Angeles and Wuhan, China. The cross-cultural comparison of Chinese adolescents in China, Chinese-American adolescents in Los Angeles, and adolescents of other ethnic groups allows us to study the effects of culture on risk behaviors.

In a typical semester, how many undergraduates do you work with? What kind of research activities do the undergraduate students perform?

I teach an undergraduate course, Theoretical Principles of Health Promotion. The class typically has about 60 students. I also supervise several additional students in directed research projects.

Undergraduates perform a number of duties on our projects, including preparing surveys, administering surveys in schools, entering data, and locating relevant literature in the library.

What are some of your recent undergraduate projects?

One of our undergraduate students helped with a study of stress and smoking among Chinese adolescents, by reading students' hand-written answers about the stress in their lives and grouping the answers into categories. Using that experience, she applied for a research fellowship and traveled to China to collect additional data and observe Chinese health clinics.

To find out more about Dr. Unger and her research, please visit this homepage.