Meredith Palm

We are proud to present Meredith Palm as our next Baylor University WISE Graduate Student Seminar Speaker. Meredith is a PhD Candidate working with Dr. Shawn Latendresse in the Department of Psychology & Neuroscience here at Baylor University. Her talk is entitled “When risk factors aren’t necessarily ‘risky’: Predicting adolescent alcohol use using a pattern-oriented approach.”

Summary: Prior research has identified a number of factors that predict increased levels of alcohol use among adolescents, such as depressive symptoms, stressful life events, or delinquency, which are typically referred to as risk factors. Research has also identified a number of factors that may buffer the effects of these risk factors, which are usually called protective factors. However, these previous findings may be overly simplistic because individuals differ in their drinking patterns (for example, the number of drinks consumed per drinking event and how frequently those drinking events occur). Four alcohol use patterns are consistent across adolescence and emerging adulthood, consisting of an abstaining pattern, a low/rarely drinking pattern, a regular drinking pattern, and a heavy/problematic drinking pattern, but the extent to which one factor indicates risk for or protection against these patterns depends on the combination of other factors present in an individual’s environment.

Left to right: Dr. Shawn Latendresse, Meredith Palm, Dr. Riz Klausmeyer