Rate My Professor Karen Kochel

Karen Kochel is an Associate Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychology at the University of Richmond. She earned a B.A. in psychology from the University of Richmond and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Family and Human Development, with a concentration in Quantitative Psychology, from Arizona State University. Kochel's research interests span multiple domains of childhood and adolescent social development, emphasizing the interplay between peer relationships, psychological adaptation, and gender as it relates to school adjustment. She maintains interests in the statistical modeling of longitudinal data. As director of the Child Developmental Science lab, she and her students examine youth psychological, social, and school adjustment through a developmental psychopathology framework, employing multi-informant survey methods and longitudinal analyses from middle childhood through emerging adulthood. Her lab projects include Project YEARS, a school-based longitudinal study of third- through fifth-graders investigating how psychological difficulties such as depressive symptoms contribute to or result from peer relationship issues including victimization; a three-wave longitudinal study of college students' psychosocial and academic adjustment during COVID-19, with focus on racial and other disparities; and the UR Belonging Project, funded by a Howard Hughes Medical Institute inclusive excellence grant to study and intervene in undergraduate student belonging.

Kochel has published numerous peer-reviewed articles on peer victimization, depressive symptoms, and social adjustment. Key publications include "Longitudinal associations among youth depressive symptoms, peer victimization, and low peer acceptance: An interpersonal process perspective" (Child Development, 2012); "Do positive peer relations mitigate transactions between depressive symptoms and peer victimization in adolescence?" (Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 2017); "Prospective associations between children’s depressive symptoms and peer victimization: The role of social helplessness" (British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 2020); and "Empirically derived psychological profiles of college students: Differential associations with COVID-19 impact and social adjustment" (Emerging Adulthood, 2022). She has contributed book chapters such as "Can friends also be foes?" in Peer Relationships in Classroom Management (2022) and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology. A member of the Society for Research in Child Development, her scholarship has accumulated over 1,000 citations.