Research Projects

Project ABC Overview

The over-arching goal of Project ABC is to understand what factors help children become well adjusted and competent socially and academically.

This study examines the factors that help young children regulate their emotions and behaviors. These social and emotional skills are important to help children make a smooth transition into formal schooling so they can be successful learners and become good citizens in the classroom with peers and teachers. Our research is showing that self-regulatory behaviors are basic and necessary for children to achieve their interpersonal and academic goals.

Related Projects

Project ABC-EAT

Project ABC-EAT is funded by the Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NIH-NICHD). This study addresses the problem of childhood overweight and obesity which is linked to long-term health risks.

We examine a variety of parent and child factors that may contribute to children’s susceptibility to developing childhood obesity. We are in the process of publishing our findings from this project, including contributing to the science of parental feeding practices, child eating behaviors, and child body composition. Our research has implications for programs and interventions aimed at helping parents learn about feeding practices that promote children’s development of healthy eating habits.

Project Chinese American Successful Living (CASL)

Project CASL is supported and funded by the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health.

This project examined the school adjustment of Chinese American high school students by conceptualizing school success as including academic and social-emotional domains. We are collaborating with a network of Asian American community organizations and social services agencies in the Houston metropolitan area. This project resulted in the first published study to demonstrate how parenting influences adolescent’s emotion regulation, which is influential in adaptive and academic competencies. Importantly, this pioneering work resulted in Liew being referred to as the “Father of the Yin and Yang of Parenting”, a parenting concept of counterbalancing strictness-supervision with autonomy support, a combination for raising children to grow into emotionally and academically competent adults. In Project CASL 2.0, Liew and his research team continue to track this sample of high school students who are transitioning into young adulthood and college.

We have other on-going projects that span early childhood (preschool years) to adolescence (high school years) to early adulthood (college years). We welcome collaborating with others with a passion and commitment for doing good work; join our team and we can continue helping people live, love, and learn in better, healthier, and more meaningful ways.