Xiafei Wang
Associate Professor
Areas of Expertise
- Program Evaluation Methods
- Applied Research Methods in Social Work
Highlighted Publications
- Wang, X., Liu, Q., Xu, Y., Xi, W., Gump, B. B., & Vasilenko, S. A. (2025). Racial differences in adverse childhood experiences: Timing and patterns. American journal of preventive medicine, 68(5), 923-931.
- Wang, X. (2022). Intergenerational effects of childhood maltreatment: The roles of parents’ emotion regulation and mentalization. Child Abuse & Neglect, 128, 104940.
- Wang, X., Lee, M. Y., & Yates, N. (2019). From past trauma to post-traumatic growth: The role of self in participants with serious mental illnesses. Social Work in Mental Health, 17(2), 149-172.
Current Projects
- Intergenerational trauma and resilience. Based on dyadic couple data, this project examined how couple's past trauma and multisystemic strengths influence couple relationships, child trauma exposure and child developmental outcomes.
- Program Evaluation on System Collaboration for Trauma-Informed Family Violence Prevention and Services Program. This project evaluates the impact of two service components in Syracuse Salvation Army: Veto Violence and Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics (NMT) to see whether the program components reduce youth endorsement to violence, as well as abused parents and youth's trauma symptoms.
- Patterns of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and its related consequences on adolescent mental health outcomes. Using latent class analysis, this projects examines how different ACEs patterns may differntially influence adolescents' sexual behavior, emotion regulaiton, sleep, and mental health problems.
Student & Research Availability
- Accepting Students in Programs: Doctoral | Masters
- Available Student Positions: Internships | Practicum
- Research or Interest Area Key Words: Trauma, resilience, behavioral health outcomes
Alma Mater
Ohio State University
Get to Know Xiafei
Xiafei Wang is a leading scholar in trauma and behavioral health whose work is driven by a mission of reducing health disparities among people who have experienced trauma. Her research program pursues this goal along three interconnected fronts : 1) uncovering the mediating/moderating factors that link childhood trauma to lifelong health consequences (including mental health, substance use, suicide, and cancer risk); 2) examining how trauma gets transmitted generationally; and 3) identifying the pathways to resilience and posttraumatic growth for trauma-affected individuals and communities. She used both quantitative (structural equation modeling, latent class analysis) and qualitative (thematic analysis, grounded theory) methods to answer research questions.
Her scholarship has earned support from federal agencies including the Health Resources and Services Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and the Administration for Children and Families, as well as numerous social service agencies and foundations. To date, she has authored 68 peer-reviewed publications in high-impact journals and 10 book chapters with over 1,600 citations.
Wang’s expertise enables interdisciplinary collaboration, bridging social work research on trauma with fields such as family science, psychology, and public health. She is committed to translating research into real-world impact, a commitment reflected in her active community partnerships with organizations like the Syracuse Salvation Army and Camden Life Center, and in her ongoing efforts to build new collaborations with community partners in Kentucky.
Xiafei Wang holds affiliations with the Life Paths Research Center and the Markey Cancer Center at the University of Kentucky. She serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Family Social Work.