2024-25 Faculty Fellow

Dr. Maher is an associate professor in the department of kinesiology at UNCG. Dr. Maher’s research agenda is based on the idea that physical activity and sedentary behavior are repeat-occurrence behaviors that occur within and across days, in part, due to the changing environmental contexts within daily life. Therefore, a fundamental aspect of her research is ambulatory assessment methods (i.e., ecological momentary assessment, daily diary, accelerometers) designed to capture behavior as well as its antecedents and consequences as they occur in naturalistic settings. More specifically, Dr. Maher’s research aims to understand (1) how motivational processes within and outside of our awareness regulate our physical activity and sedentary behavior, (2) how physical activity and sedentary behavior impact psychological health and well-being, (3) how health behaviors co-occur across time and space and (4) how best to use technology to capture the dynamics of motivation, behavior, contexts, and feeling states as well as to intervene on behavior. Dr. Maher uses a lifespan developmental perspective in her work and has conducted research on the antecedents and consequences of health behaviors with participants aged 8-98 years, though her primary line of research focuses on older adults.  

Dr. Maher’s plans to use her time as a CHWH fellow to analyze and disseminate data from a recently completed daily diary study on multilevel determinants of adolescent girls’ physical activity. Further, Dr. Maher plans to use findings from that work to develop a grant application focused on examining differences in those daily determinants among racially and ethnically minoritized adolescents. 

We are so happy to have her join us as a faculty fellow in the Center for Women’s Health and Wellness for the second year in a row! Thank you for all that you do, Jackie!