Joshua Ketola

Research Statement

As a clinical counselor, it is important to understand how interactions occur across many

domains, including cultures, subcultures, age and developmental levels. For example, the

population of the U.S. has a propensity for habits that are less than optimal for our health. This

starts in childhood, with the consumption of high calorie foods and high sugar content drinks,

and continues into adulthood with more dangerous substances. These activities set the stage for

social interactions and often determine the friend groups that we associate ourselves with.

My current research, Social development and sugary drinks: changing the American diet,

asks how the consumption of sugar added drinks have affected social development stages of

undergraduate students. I cross reference this to their year in their program, as well as their given

Social Economic Status. The data will be collected through a Qualtrics survey and broadly

distributed via list serves across many demographics to get the broadest target range. The

analysis will be done as an 2x2 ANOVA using SPSS software.

The information in this project is used to see if there are differences in advertising

targeting to lower class areas that would make poor consumption habits more socially acceptable

than in areas of higher class status. This will help to create an awareness of poor consumption

habits that affect social desirability factors. This information will help to guide future counselors

in educating clients in the fact that healthy choices extend beyond immediate body issues and

guide life outcomes in the social, interpersonal, educational, and ultimately career domains as

well.

This topic has implications in multiple domains of counseling and psychology, therefore

it lends itself well to integration into practice. There is a myriad of information available on
similar topics in childhood that are linked with diabetes research, so I plan on using this

information to incorporate my research into a full length creative nonfiction book on the topic in

trade publishing once I complete graduate school.

My next project will focus on social discounting behaviors in situations where high

calorie diets are normal practice. This will focus on specifically gambling behaviors in low

income Native American communities of the Northeastern United States. I will seek grant

funding from the Native American Research Centers for Health, or NARCH, for this future

project.

By quantifying the significance of diet choice in low SES neighborhoods, both of these

research projects provide significant empirical and theoretical contributions to a growing body of

scholarship in the clinical counseling social sciences.