Janina Mueller, M.Sc.

Biography

Janina Müller is a doctoral student in Health Psychology at Klagenfurt University under supervision of Univ.-Prof. Dr. Heather M. Foran. Janina’s research focuses on loneliness and social isolation, family relationships, and mental health. Her dissertation project is focused on ICT interventions aiming at reducing loneliness and social isolation and creating opportunities for social interactions between family members. Based on findings from her first study she developed a psychoeducational intervention (“Connect2Family”) to reduce technology-related psychological, educational, and technical barriers among older adults. Her primary aim is to examine whether this brief intervention improves social interaction among family members and reduces loneliness and isolation. The secondary aim is to evaluate the impact of this intervention on health and well-being outcomes in a randomized controlled trial. Her dissertation project has received funding from the Bundesministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Wirtschaft and the Faculty of Cultural Sciences (KUWI) at Klagenfurt University. More information about the intervention study can be found here: https://connect2family.aau.at

Janina presented findings from her dissertation project at the 12th European Public Health Conference, the 16th World Congress on Public Health (WCPH2020), and the 13th European Public Health Conference. Janina has been also involved in different research projects (mostly RCTs), since she started her doctoral studies in 2018. Examples are a family intervention study in Southeastern Europe to prevent child mental health problems (RISE) and a local clinical study to validate the German translation of the diagnostic criteria for parent-child relational problems (Family Validation Study). She has attended a Virtual Summer School at Charité Berlin in 2020 to improve her knowledge on longitudinal methods and dyadic data analyses. She recently published a paper in Frontiers Psychology using data from a 10-year study to examine family functioning and mental health among German families who participated in a DFG-funded RCT of Triple P Parenting program. Other papers are still work in progress.