My experiences working within schools and other youth-serving institutions have led me to realize that, although the importance of supportive relationships is well understood, enhancing the capacity of schools to create nurturing environments will necessarily depend on intentional intervention and collaboration. My dissertation, which was successfully defended in June 2023, addressed this issue by developing and pilot-testing a student-report measure of specific relationship-building behaviors that contribute to positive relationships between students and teachers: The Relationship-Building Behaviors Scale. I hope that this measure will be used widely in schools to inform efforts to foster positive relationships and improve relationships that may be strained. 

My measure development process was grounded in an understanding of the construct and informed by research evidence and feedback from researchers, students, and school-based professionals. The scale demonstrates satisfactory preliminary evidence of effective scale functioning, convergent and discriminant validity, and internal consistency using middle school samples (grades 6-8). I look forward to continuing to refine this measure throughout my professional career.