Historically I have studied adolescent stress and coping, cross-cultural comparisons of adolescent adjustment, adolescent depression, and psychometrics (statistical treatment of questionnaires). In particular, I have been interested in how children and adolescents cope with the problems in their lives. I have studied stress, coping, and adjustment and have examined how coping either helps or hurts the individual in this process.

Recently, my research has expanded to include topics in positive psychology, for example much of my recent work focuses on savouring, happiness, mindfulness, and meaning in life.

Two major strands of current work are: 1) identifying individual differences in the emotion motives that motivate emotion regulation efforts; and 2) understanding the psychological bases for wokeness (awareness and sympathy for marginalised groups in society), as well as anti-woke attitudes (fear of loss of entitlement and privilege).

At the same time, I am committed to developing innovative statistical analyses and methods that enable researchers to obtain optimal information from their data. In this vein, I have written a book on statistical mediation and moderation, and I give lectures and workshops on these and other statistical topics.