Current Research Initiaves
Awareness To Action: Understanding Employers’ Motivation for Building Disability Confidence
Research Coordinator on a community-based, between-subjects experimental survey in partnership with the Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work, supervised by Dr. Alexis Buettgen. This project examines whether the capability, opportunity, and motivation (COM-B) factors that drive disability-inclusive hiring among existing CCRW-partnered employers generalize to a broader population of small and medium-sized Canadian enterprises, and what individual and organizational factors shape that generalizability. I am leading data collection, analysis, and manuscript preparation for this 300-participant experimental survey. Outputs from this work includes a quantitative manuscript, a mixed-methods analysis integrating these results with earlier qualitative findings, community report, and webinar.
Autism Advisory Group for Inclusive Research
With the Autism Alliance of Canada, as a member and co-chair, I collaborate with an autistic youth advisory group to co-designing an autism-informed research protocol toolkit aimed at changing how federal funding bodies support and shape autism research.
WELCOME Study
Led by Dr. Todd Coleman and Dr. Ciann Wilson, the WELCOME Study uses qualitative and quantitative methods to explore the service access needs of 2SLGBTQ+ newcomers in Waterloo Region, with particular attention to racialized newcomers navigating the intersections of racism, homophobia, and transphobia. I am leading a grounded theory analysis of 2SLGBTQ+ identity development within the qualitative data, comparing common identity development frameworks with the lived stories of those interviewed.
Equitable Evaluation Equity Building: Co-Creating Frameworks for Action
Led by Dr. Ciann Wilson and Dr. Marritt Kirst and funded by the SSHRC Partnership Grant, this project brings together academics, non-profit funders, and evaluation professionals to build equitable evaluation capacity for Canadian non-profits serving equity-seeking communities. I’m supporting survey co-design and interview transcript cleaning and analysis, supporting the project’s equitable evaluation needs assessment and inform a capacity-building framework.
Black & Indigenous Lives, Artificial Intelligence, and Data Management in a Time of Transition: Implications for Ethics and Self-determination
Led by Dr. Ciann Wilson, this project builds on historical and growing partnerships between Indigenous and Black communities to develop community-controlled research, evaluation, and data management practices, evaluating existing protocols for ethical data use in an era of open access, AI, and algorithmic research. I co-developed and co-facilitated workshops on Black and Indigenous community-based research ethics, creating spaces for knowledge exchange on data sovereignty, informed consent, and rigorous protections for these communities.
Workplace Equity Co-Design
Committee member of a 5-year international project on designing intelligent industrial robots for STEM inclusion, leveraging self-determination theory to foster autistic talent in manufacturing, with Virginia Tech, George Washington University, and Notre Dame.
Academic Service
Student Editor, American Journal of Community Psychology Special Issue: Hope in Times of Intersecting Crises: Community-based Research and Practice in Complex Contexts.
Selected Previous Research
Autistic youth perspectives on social communication to inform a communication partner training program (CPT) with Speech Language Pathologists (SLPs)
As a co-creator, I supported the editing and development of research materials, ethics application, focus-group facilitation, interview coding, and co-authorship on forthcoming manuscripts.
Selected Poster Presentations
Mournet, A. M., Wilkinson, E., Libsack, E. J., Dekker, E. D.*, Bal, V. H., & Kleiman, E. M. (2026). “The world is really not built for everyone”: A qualitative investigation of suicide risk among autistic transgender and gender diverse adults and the essential role of health care providers (Poster Presentation). 2026 Canadian Community Psychology Conference. Waterloo, ON.
Albin, M.*, Dekker, E.*, Padvaiskas, M., Sooriyahetti, O., Shaw, R., Goodes, B., & Phoenix, M. (2026). Approaching co-design from a neurodiversity-affirming lens: Reflections for people with research expertise and lived/living expertise (Poster Presentation). Canadian Autism Leadership Summit (CALS). Ottawa, ON.
Curriculum Vitae
Link
Erin Dekker 