I have an active and continuing research agenda in the areas of psychological well-being and mental health in young populations. I have a solid record of attracting national and international research funding in these areas.​

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• I have been recently awarded a research grant funded by the National Institute of Health and the University of Connecticut to lead a project to advance the conceptualization and measurement of emotional well-being through psychological network analysis (USD 30,000). Psychological network models offer an alternative approach to assess the dimensionality of constructs without necessarily detecting a common latent variable, such as in traditional measurement approaches (e.g., CFA). This approach be used to in the field psychopathology and psychiatry but its application to the understanding of positive notions of well-being is largely unexplored.

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• I currently serve as the PI of an interdisciplinary research project funded by Nazarbayev University ($75,000). The purpose of this project is to profile the mental health of higher education students in Kazakhstan, as well as to elucidate their help-seeking behaviors and forms of support available to them to address psychological distress in university settings. In addition, the project examines the personal and contextual factors promoting and undermining college students’ mental health and help-seeking.

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• I served as a Co-PI in a large-scale, mixed-methods collaborative project between Nazarbayev University and Cambridge University, funded by the British Council ($350,000). This study aimed to provide a general picture of secondary education children’s well-being and engagement in Kazakhstan and to examine the factors influencing the psychological well-being of young people in educational contexts.

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Research emerging from these projects has been published in prestigious international, peer-reviewed journals such as Current Psychology (Winter et al., in press), Child Indicators Research (Hernández-Torrano, 2020, Hernández-Torrano, Faucher, & Tynybayeva, 2021), the International Journal of Research and Method in Education (CohenMiller, Faucher, Hernández-Torrano, Brown Hajdukova, 2017), and Frontiers in Psychology (Hernández-Torrano et al., 2020, Hernández-Torrano et al., 2021). These results are also being used to inform the development of guidelines and policies to provide psychological support to university students across Kazakhstan and other Central Asian countries.​

I have devoted considerable time and effort to understanding the role of emotion in children and adolescents' academic-related outcomes in K-12 settings.

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• For example, I have analyzed the predictive capacity of trait emotional intelligence (EI) on academic achievement controlling for the effects of IQ, personality, and self-concept (Ferrando et al., 2011) and the role of stress management as a competence of EI in young people (Sáinz et al., 2012).

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• In addition to that, my research has examined the relationship between emotion, affect, stress, and creativity across different population groups (Sánchez-Ruiz & Hernández-Torrano, 2014; Sánchez-Ruiz, Hernández-Torrano, Pérez-González, Batey, & Petrides, 2011).

My research has also focused on improving the understanding of personal and school features that facilitate or hinder the realization of excellence and equity in education from a psychological perspective. Funded through multiple research grants, my research has extensively explored:

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• The cognitive and emotional profile of high achieving students using modern theories of intelligence, affect, and motivation, such as trait EI, self-determination theory, successful intelligence, divergent thinking, etc. (e.g., Almeida, Prieto, Ferreira, Ferrando, Ferrándiz, Bermejo, & Hernández, 2011; Almukhambetova, & Hernández-Torrano, 2021; Hernández-Torrano, 2018; Hernández-Torrano, Ferrándiz, Ferrando, Prieto, & Fernández, 2014; Hernández-Torrano, Prieto, Ferrándiz, Bermejo, & Sáinz, 2013; Hernández-Torrano, D. & Saranli, 2015; Hernández-Torrano & Tursunbayeva, 2016).

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• Barriers that promote and prevent students with special education needs (SEN) from accessing and participating in education in mainstream schools (e.g., Helmer, Kasa, Somerton, Makoelle, & Hernández-Torrano, in press; Somerton, Helmer, Kasa, Hernández-Torrano, Makoelle, 2021)

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• Personal (e.g., motivation, resilience, adjustment, self-concept, cognitive skills) and contextual (e.g., family, peer, and university support, social stereotypes) factors that support and hinder the access and retention of female students in STEM education (e.g., ​​Almukhambetova, Kuzhabekova, & Hernández-Torrano, 2022; Almukhambetova, Hernández-Torrano, Nam, in press).

I have contributed to the design, development, and validation of multiple data collection tools (i.e., questionnaires) to measure cognitive and affective constructs such as social and emotional competence (Ferrándiz, Hernández, Bermejo, Ferrando, & Prieto, 2012), self-regulatory behaviours (Zollanvari, Caglar, Kho, & Hernández-Torrano, 2017), positive mental health (Hernández-Torrano et al., 2021), and social desirability bias (Nurumov, Hernández-Torrano, Mhamed, & Ospanova, 2022), among others.

 

In the next years, I would be interested to expand my work in survey design to measure constructs of interest to me and my future colleagues using traditional approaches based on classical test theory (e.g., CFA), but also more novel ones based on item response theory and psychological network theory.​

Over the last years I have developed expertise in scientometric, bibliometric, and visualization techniques to map the research literature in selected fields. As a result, I have published multiple articles examining the current state, development,  and structure of the fields such as educational psychology (Hernández-Torrano & Ho, 2020), child well-being (Hernández-Torrano, 2020), creativity (Hernández-Torrano & Ibrayeva, 2020), inclusive education (Hernández-Torrano, Somerton, & Helmer, in press), gifted education (Hernández-Torrano & Kuzhabekova, 2020), large-scale assessment in education (Hernández-Torrano & Courtney, 2021; and post-soviet education research (Hernández-Torrano, Karabassova, Izekenova, & Courtney, 2021).

 

This is also a research area that I would like to expand in the future. In particular, I would like to apply my knowledge of bibliometric approaches to identify hot topics and research niches in areas and disciplines of interest. This would allow to direct my research and that of my students towards these emerging areas.​