Dr. Mijin Choi
Associate Professor, School of Social Work
Research Areas:
Childhood adversity, child maltreatment, family poverty, out-of-home placement (foster care, formal kinship care, and informal kinship care), child welfare workforce (child welfare training and trauma-informed self-care), and quantitative research.
Background
Dr. Mijin Choi holds a Ph.D. from the University at Albany, State University of New York, and an MSW and BA from Ewha Womans University in South Korea. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Mental Health Law and Policy at the University of South Florida, and has received a Fellowship for University-Based Doctoral Candidates and Faculty for Research in Child Maltreatment, funded by the Children's Bureau, Administration on Children, Youth and Families, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. Her current research focuses on the intertwined relationships among child abuse and neglect, poverty, the implementation of Alternative Response (differential response), and out-of-home placement service provision.
About Faculty Fellows Projects
This project examines how child welfare policy environments — particularly Alternative Response (AR) — relate to the recurrence of child maltreatment, with a focus on families affected by economic hardship and substance use. Using a mixed-methods approach, the study combines analysis of national CPS administrative data (NCANDS) with in-depth interviews with CPS workers to explore whether family-supportive policy environments help reduce maltreatment recurrence and improve family self-sufficiency.