Quinn Hendershot

I research the psychology of couples and families who have moved from one country, locality, or place of residence to settle in another. Immigrant couples face significant challenges associated with balancing the demands of novel cultural contexts while maintaining their heritage culture. I am particularly interested in improving the theory and methodology of this line of research. I have described how the increase in research on immigration and cultural competence among families has often lacked solid theoretical grounding and psychometric validation, limiting the quality of research in this area (Hendershot & Johnson, 2024). While my overarching research goal is to understand the predictors of strong relationships among couples who have immigrated to a new country, a prerequisite of this work is a theoretical foundation leading to specific hypotheses and valid measures to test these hypotheses. My research program addresses this need through the (a) building and testing of a new theoretical model describing how cultural competence and relationship functioning intersect, (b) development and validation of Spanish-language relationship measures, and (c) application of this knowledge to improve how psychologists intervene with immigrant couples. This work is particularly important given that diverse populations continue to be underrepresented in psychological research samples.