Elizabeth Cavadel

Elizabeth Cavadel specializes in descriptive and evaluation studies on early childhood topics. Her research interests include early childhood intervention; child assessment; cognitive development; family support; and early education policy, particularly for low-income families. She also has experience in clinical and developmental mental health, with a focus on prevention.

Cavadel studies Head Start and preschool children's programs, focusing on children's social, emotional, and academic outcomes, school readiness, and program quality. She has expertise in developing and administering evidence-based interventions and developmentally-appropriate assessments. On the Quality of Caregiver Interactions for Infants and Toddlers project, she developed an observational tool to assess the quality of interactions between caregivers and children in non-parental care settings. She is the project director for the LA Advance Study, an evaluation of professional development programs. In addition, she is part of the research team for a longitudinal evaluation of the Harlem Children's Zone and the Goal Oriented Adult Learning for Self-Sufficiency project, which examines how executive function and related cognitive skills can be applied to parenting and workforce development programs.

Before joining Mathematica in 2010, she was a clinical research assistant and child and adolescent therapist for the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, working with the Philadelphia Collaborative Violence Prevention Project funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She is a manuscript reviewer for several journals, including the American Education Research Journal, the Journal of Cognitive Education and Psychology, and Child Development. She holds a Ph.D. in applied developmental psychology from the University of Pennsylvania.