Mary Ellen Young

Dr. Young’s research interests can be broadly defined as the study of the psychosocial aspects of catastrophic illness or injury. Her past research centered on the brain and spinal cord injury populations. Specific topics of interest included community integration, vocational outcomes, social support and caregiving, sexuality and abuse, and issues of cultural diversity. Dr. Young approaches her research from a combined paradigm of quantitative and qualitative research methods, involving interviews, focus groups, observations, and surveys. She is particularly interested in using qualitative research methods to study the lived experience of disability from the perspective of the individual with the disability and to develop grounded theory relating to adaptation to disability. She has developed expertise on using computer assisted data analysis systems to handle large amounts of open-ended narrative data. Her current research focuses on stroke recovery and family caregiving.