Search

The authors explored trajectories of perceived discrimination over a 6-year period (five assessments in 6th-11th grade) in relation to academic, behavioral, and psychological adjustment in 8th and 11th grades. They distinguished discrimination from adults versus peers in addition to overt versus covert discrimination from peers. The sample included 226 African American, White, Dominican, Puerto Rican, and Chinese adolescents (ages 11-12 at Time 1) recruited in sixth grade from six public schools in New York City. All forms of discrimination increased during middle school and decreased during high school. The frequency with which adolescents reported different sources and types of discrimination varied across ethnicity/race, but not gender. Initial levels and rates of change in discrimination predicted academic, behavioral, and psychological adjustment in 8th and 11th grades, albeit in complex ways.

Negative interactions with the legal system can inform adolescents' relationships with schools. The present daily-diary study examined 13,545 daily survey assessments from 387 adolescents (Mage = 13-14; 40% male; 32% Black, 50% White, and 18% Other ethnic-racial minority) across 35 days to assess whether police stops predicted adolescents' school disengagement through their psychological distress as a mediator. Results showed that 9% of youth experienced at least one police stop, and 66 stops occurred in total over the 35-day study course. Youth stopped by the police reported greater next-day school disengagement, and youth's psychological distress mediated the link between police stops and school disengagement. Disengagement did not predict youth's next-day police stops. In addition, ethnic-racial minority youth reported more negative police encounters than did White youth, and the effect of a police stop on next-day psychological distress was more negative for Other ethnic-racial minority youth. Implications for reducing police intervention in adolescents' lives are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Culturally relevant practices are valuable assets for ethnically-racially diverse schools, but few studies examine whether such practices promote students' engagement in school longitudinally and whether ethnicity-race moderates the effects of such practices on students' engagement. To address this gap, the present study examined whether schools that acknowledge and promote positive messages about youth's ethnicity-race (i.e., school cultural socialization practices) promoted multiple dimensions of students' school engagement and whether these links differed between African American and European American students. Data were collected in four waves during a two-year period from 403 fifth graders (55.1% males; 63% African American, 37% European American). The results revealed that African American youth who perceived more school cultural socialization reported greater behavioral and affective engagement (but not cognitive engagement) six months later. European Americans' perceived school cultural socialization was unrelated to their levels of engagement in later months. Across groups, neither type of engagement predicted subsequent school cultural socialization, supporting the direction of effects in the results. Implications are discussed regarding how educators can leverage cultural socialization to promote school engagement among African American youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors examined whether the longitudinal inter‐relations between ethnic‐racial discrimination and ethnic‐racial identity vary according to the perpetrator of discrimination. The authors used three waves of data from early adolescents (n = 387; ages 11–12 at Wave 1) to assess the strength and direction of relations between perceived discrimination from non‐school adults and peers vis‐à‐vis ethnic‐racial identity exploration, commitment, private regard, and public regard. Cross‐lagged autoregressive path analyses showed that more frequent discrimination, regardless of source, had reciprocal and significant longitudinal inter‐relations with exploration and public regard. Peer discrimination predicted lower commitment and private regard 1 year later, whereas non‐school adult discrimination did not. Implications are discussed in relation to the role of peers and ethnic‐racial identity processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite growing evidence that racial-ethnic discrimination has a critical impact on college students of color, there is a shortage of longitudinal studies investigating such discrimination across the course of students' college careers. The present study examined trajectories of professor- and peer-perpetrated ethnic-racial discrimination across the first three years in college and the correlations between these trajectories and academic, psychological, and physical adjustment outcomes during students' fourth year in a sample of 770 Black, 835 Asian American, and 742 Latino college students (total n = 2347; 60.1% female) at elite colleges and universities in the United States. Latent growth modeling revealed stability in reported peer discrimination over the first three years of college and an increase in reported discrimination from professors. Discrimination from peers and professors equally predicted unfavorable grades, a lower likelihood of on-time graduation, and less school satisfaction. Perceived discrimination from peers (but not from professors) during students' first year predicted higher rates of depressive symptoms and more health problems in their fourth year. Although initial levels and trajectories of discrimination varied as a function of students' ethnicity-race, the correlates between discrimination and adjustment outcomes did not vary between ethnic-racial groups. The present findings suggest that ethnic-racial discrimination is a complex, ecologically-based stressor that presents a constellation of challenges for students of color attending elite colleges and universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many families experienced financial and health stressors associated with parental employment. Using multi-informant and daily-diary data from a nationwide U.S. sample of parents and children (626 dyads; 18,780 daily assessments across 30 days: May 18, 2020–June 1, 2020, October 19, 2020–November 2, 2020; parents: Mage = 43, 15% male; children: Mage = 15, 42% male; 36% Black, 26% White, 14% multiracial, 12% Latinx, 11% Asian American, and 1% Native American), this intensive longitudinal study investigated (a) the mediating role of health stress and financial stress in the link between parental employment status and psychosocial adjustment among adolescents and their parents and (b) whether this link differed by families' socioeconomic status or receipt of government subsidies. Results indicated that families who experienced job loss tended to report higher levels of health stress and financial stress, which in turn was associated with heightened negative affect and poorer sleep quality for both parents and adolescents. When parents work from home (WFH), families tended to have lower levels of health stress and financial stress, which in turn weakened the positive links with negative affect and sleep quality. Lower- (vs. higher-) income families experienced weaker protective effects associated with WFH arrangements. Government subsidies were associated with lower stress and better psychosocial outcomes in families experiencing job loss. Public Significance Statement: During COVID-19, families experienced stressors associated with changes in parental employment. This study shows that flexible working schedules and government subsidies during periods of heightened family stress may serve as catalysts for family resilience, as they were associated with less impairment to family functioning. Clinicians should work closely with social workers to help increase patient literacy on available supports, especially for families whose circumstances are compounded by financial hardships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An editorial on policing of minority youth and the effect on their mental health is presented. The author discusses the mental health consequences of police stops on minority youth in Great Britain and the U.S., the disparities in such stops based on race, and the possible long-term impacts.