UROP Project

Supporting Interpersonal Skill Development using PEERS® Curriculum

interpersonal skills, social relationships, PEERS®, curriculum implementation
Research Mentor: Dr. Denise Lynne Dennis, she/her
Department, College, Affiliation: Florida Center for Reading Research, Education, Health, and Human Sciences
Contact Email: DLDennis@fsu.edu
Research Assistant Supervisor (if different from mentor):
Research Assistant Supervisor Email:
Faculty Collaborators: Dr. Jenny Root, PhD she/her
Faculty Collaborators Email: jrroot@fsu.edu
Looking for Research Assistants: Yes
Number of Research Assistants: 1
Relevant Majors: School Psych, SLP, Education, Ed Psych, Social Work, Child Development, etc.
Project Location: On FSU Main Campus
Research Assistant Transportation Required: Yes
Remote or In-person: Partially Remote
Approximate Weekly Hours: 5, Flexible schedule (Combination of business and outside of business. TBD between student and research mentor.)
Roundtable Times and Zoom Link:
  • Day: Tuesday, September 1
    Start Time: 1:00
    End Time: 1:30
    Zoom Link: https://fsu.zoom.us/my/dldennis
  • Day: Wednesday, September 2
    Start Time: 5:00
    End Time: 5:30
    Zoom Link: https://fsu.zoom.us/my/dldennis

Project Description

Research increasingly supports the importance of explicit, systematic, and evidence-based social communication instruction for adolescents. Interventions incorporating modeling, rehearsal, performance feedback, perspective taking, and structured opportunities for social practice have demonstrated positive outcomes related to social knowledge, peer engagement, and interpersonal functioning. One intervention with a growing evidence base is the Program for the Education and Enrichment of Relational Skills (PEERS), originally developed at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). PEERS is a manualized intervention designed to teach friendship skills, conversational skills, conflict management, electronic communication etiquette, and other interpersonal competencies through explicit instruction and guided practice.

Existing PEERS research has primarily focused on clinic-based or university-affiliated implementation models, particularly with adolescents and young adults with autism spectrum disorder who have average or above-average cognitive and verbal abilities (Wyman & Claro, 2020; Zheng et al., 2021). Research has demonstrated improvements in social knowledge, peer interactions, social responsiveness, and social engagement among participants (Cheng et al., 2025; Zheng et al. 2021). However, important gaps remain in the literature.
This study seeks to address these gaps by examining implementation of School-based PEERS within middle school settings through a mixed-methods design that incorporates student outcomes, teacher outcomes, implementation experiences, and school contextual factors.

Research Tasks: Literature review, materials creation, data collection, data entry, note-taking, data management, attending meetings, implementation support, Interview observation, transcript cleaning

Skills that research assistant(s) may need: CITI training (required)
Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, Word, Excel, PPT, proficient (required)
Self-starter, able to work independently, great communication, willing to ask questions, interested in improving outcomes for students with disabilities (required)
RedCap knowledge, data entry (recommended)

Mentoring Philosophy

As a researcher, I believe that team science creates a better final outcome. Mentoring provides an opportunity to co-create trusting, respectful, relationships that foster growth, development of self-determination skills, and improve the quality of research. I think it is critical to work with mentees to support them in developing skills that they value. Self-discipline and attention to detail are important when setting and meeting timelines and priorities, so working collaboratively to establish timelines and expectations, and learning why bringing your whole self to your work makes for a richer more complex experience. As a mentor, I value diversity, communication, willingness to fail forward, and an understanding of the immense responsibility and rewards that come with being entrusted to work with participants for the purpose of research. Mentees should have the opportunity to explore areas of interest, build knowledge about research, and develop a sense of pride in their accomplishments. Mentoring can provide a facilitated exploration into areas of research that mentees have had little to no experience with previously and an introduction to research topics that they may not have the opportunity to discover independently. Ultimately, co-creating knowledge is the goal of both research and mentoring, and collaboration makes our research and us all better.

Additional Information

Team members working on this project have ADHD, which makes organization and tasks requiring executive functioning skills, such as cleaning up transcripts for accuracy, challenging. Being able to depend on a mentee to follow processes and procedures will be important.

Link to Publications


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