This spring, I got the exciting opportunity to travel to Northeastern University in Boston, United States for two months. I visited the Learning and Brain Development Lab, led by dr. Juliet Davidow. During my PhD, I have been working on the development of a questionnaire assessing prosocial risk-taking in adolescents (behavior in which you take risks to help someone else). In 2023, we set up a collaboration with the Learning and Brain Development Lab to create an English translation of the questionnaire and to validate it. During this visit, cultural differences between American and Dutch youth were discussed, while American data collection progressed. During this visit, I have been working on the validation and analyses of the Dutch version of the questionnaire as well. Furthermore, I have given and attended different presentations and workshops.
I am very grateful for the opportunity I got to go abroad during my PhD, to get insights into different labs and a different university culture and of course to meet plenty new people and to gain new experiences. It was a wonderful period in which I learned a lot, got to do a lot of work on one of the projects of my dissertation but also got the time and space to think about my dissertation as a whole. I want to take this moment to thank my amazing and warm American colleagues, dr. Juliet Davidow, Rebecca Hennessy, Haley Hegefeld and all others for welcoming me with open arms. Besides this, I also want to thank my VU supervisors (Barbara Braams, Lydia Krabbendam and Paul van Lange) and the FGB Travel Grant for the support and this opportunity!
