Matching Items (6)
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- All Subjects: Neighborhoods
- Creators: White, Rebecca
- Creators: Iida, Masumi
Description
Mexican-origin adolescent females have the highest birthrate of all other ethnic groups in the U.S. Further, teen mothers are at significant risk for poor outcomes, including low educational attainment. Therefore, examining predictors of Mexican-origin teen mothers' educational attainment was the main goal of the current study. Future-oriented beliefs such as educational aspirations and expectations are suggested to have positive implications for adolescents' educational attainment in general. Therefore, guided by bioecological, social capital, status attainment, social learning, and collective socialization of neighborhood theories, the current study examined neighborhood, maternal, and cultural predictors of 190 Mexican-origin parenting adolescents' educational aspirations, expectations, and attainment. With respect to maternal predictors, the study examined mother figures' (i.e., grandmothers') educational attainment, and aspirations and expectations for the adolescent as predictors of adolescents' educational attainment. Using a multi-informant, longitudinal analytic model, results suggest that adolescents' educational expectations, rather than aspirations, significantly predicted adolescents' attainment one year later. Additionally, grandmothers' educational attainment was indirectly associated with adolescents' educational attainment via the educational expectations of both the grandmother and the adolescent. Further, the neighborhood context indirectly informed adolescents' educational attainment via both grandmothers and adolescents' educational expectations. Finally, adolescents' ethnic identity affirmation was significantly associated with adolescents' educational attainment two years later. Implications regarding the importance of educational expectations and ethnic identity affirmation for at-risk parenting adolescents' educational attainment will be discussed.
ContributorsHarvey-Mendoza, Elizabeth C (Author) / Umaña-Taylor, Adriana J. (Thesis advisor) / Updegraff, Kimberly A. (Committee member) / White, Rebecca (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Ethnic enclaves, or neighborhoods with high ethnic densities, have been linked with positive health outcomes and lower crime rates. Using data from the Pathways to Desistance project, this study tested whether neighborhood Latino concentration prospectively predicted re-offense rates among a sample of Mexican American juvenile offenders (n = 247). Further, I tested whether the effect of neighborhood Latino concentration on re-offense was moderated by ethnic identity, Mexican orientation, and generation status. Covariates included demographics and risk factors for offending. Results showed that neighborhood Latino concentration, ethnic identity, Mexican orientation, and generation status were not predictive of re-offense rates. Gender, risk for offending, and time spent supervised during the follow-up period predicted re-offense rates one year later. The results highlight the importance of risk assessment for this high risk group.
ContributorsBui, Leena (Author) / Chassin, Laurie (Thesis advisor) / Knight, George (Committee member) / Tein, Jenn-Yun (Committee member) / White, Rebecca (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
Adolescent substance use carries a considerable public health burden, and early initiation into use is especially problematic. Research has shown that sensation seeking traits increase risk for substance use experimentation, but less is known about individual and contextual factors that can potentially protect against this risk. This study utilized a longitudinal sub sample of youth (N=567) from a larger study of familial alcoholism to examine sensation seeking in early adolescence (ages 10-15) and its relations to later substance use experimentation. Hypotheses tested whether individual executive control, parenting consistency, neighborhood disadvantage, and neighborhood ethnic concentration moderated sensation seeking’s effects on substance use experimentation using multilevel zero-inflated Poisson modeling. Across models, higher levels of sensation seeking were predictive of a higher likelihood of having initiated substance use, but sensation seeking was not significantly related to the number of different substance use classes tried. Only neighborhood disadvantage emerged as a significant moderator of the path from sensation seeking to substance use initiation. The strength of sensation seeking effects on substance use initiation increased as neighborhood disadvantage decreased below average levels, with the most advantaged neighborhoods exhibiting the strongest link between sensation seeking and substance use. There was also a trend towards the most disadvantaged neighborhoods exhibiting increased sensation seeking effects on substance use initiation. These results highlight the importance of focusing on relatively more advantaged areas as potentially risky environments for the externalizing pathway to substance use.
ContributorsJensen, Michaeline R (Author) / Gonzales, Nancy A. (Thesis advisor) / Chassin, Laurie (Thesis advisor) / Enders, Craig (Committee member) / White, Rebecca (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
School belonging is critical to well-being among youth. However, scholarship on school belonging among Black youth has largely used deficit perspectives. Furthermore, there is a lack of social, historical, and culturally informed perspectives to examine factors that may promote or prohibit school belonging. Currently, there is limited research about how factors across socioecological levels impact school belonging among Black youth, and how this relates to behavioral health. In this mixed-method dissertation, I used phenomenological perspectives (i.e., teachers, Black youth) to examine factors that promote school belonging while accounting for manifestations of racism, then link this process to marijuana use. In Study 1, I used interviews with racially-ethnically diverse teachers (n=15) in Arizona to examine their perspective on factors which promote or prohibit a sense of school belonging. Additionally, I used Brown’s (2007) framework to identify culturally responsive strategies for promoting school belonging. Findings demonstrated that cultural humility, human connections, diverse literature, culturally aware assignments, and extracurricular involvement are critical factors that promote school belonging, while racism evidenced by racial discrimination, colorblindness, discipline disparities, and systemic racism created significant barriers to belonging. The culturally responsive strategies demonstrate unified efforts school systems use to support school belonging among Black youth. In Study 2, I employed cross-classified hierarchical linear modeling with data from the Arizona Youth Survey and structural indicators of schools and neighborhoods to examine the association between school belonging and lifetime time marijuana use among Black youth (n=6120). Findings demonstrated that school belonging was associated with decreased marijuana use, which significantly varied across schools and neighborhoods. Specifically, Black youth that attended schools with higher percentages of certified teachers and resided in majority White neighborhoods reported greater decrease in the association between school belonging and marijuana use, while higher neighborhood educational attainment was related to increase in the association between school belonging and marijuana use. Integration of the findings from these two studies demonstrate promotive factors for Black youths’ sense of school belonging, while acknowledging how racism is embedded within their daily environments. Structural changes addressing racism and supporting Black youth are needed across contexts.
ContributorsMorris, Kamryn Serena (Author) / Seaton, Eleanor K (Thesis advisor) / Lindstrom Johnson, Sarah (Committee member) / Iida, Masumi (Committee member) / Flores-Gonzales, Nilda (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
Neighborhoods are important aspects of the adolescent and family ecology. Cultural developmental perspectives posit that neighborhood environments contain both promoting and inhibiting characteristics for ethnic-racial minoritized populations (García Coll et al., 1996). Historically, neighborhood researchers have approached Latino neighborhoods from a deficit perspective. Thus, there is limited research about how Latino neighborhoods support Latino youth development and family processes. In my dissertation, I examine both the promoting and inhibiting aspects of Latino identified neighborhoods for adolescent development.
In study 1, I prospectively examined a model in which Mexican-origin parents’ perceptions of social and cultural resources in neighborhoods may support parents to engage in higher levels of cultural socialization and, in turn, promote adolescents’ ethnic-racial identity (ERI). Findings suggest neighborhood social and cultural cohesion in late childhood promoted middle adolescents’ ERI affirmation via intermediate increases in maternal cultural socialization. Similar patterns were observed for ERI resolution, but only for adolescents whose mothers were born in the United States. Findings have critical implications for how neighborhoods support parents’ cultural socialization practices and adolescents’ ERI.
In study 2, I used a convergent mixed methods research design to compare and contrast researchers’ neighborhood assessments collected using systematic social observations (e.g., physical disorder, sociocultural symbols) with adolescents’ qualitative neighborhood assessments collected by semi-structured interviews with Mexican-origin adolescents. Using quantitative methods, I found that researchers observed varying degrees of physical disorder, physical decay, street safety, and sociocultural symbols across adolescents’ neighborhood environments. Using qualitative methods, I found that adolescents observed these same neighborhood features about half the time, but also that they often layered additional meaning on top of distinct neighborhood features. Using mixed methods I found that, in the context of high spatial concordance, there was a high degree of overlap between researchers and adolescents in terms of agreement on the presence of physical disorder, physical decay, street safety, and sociocultural symbols. Lastly, adolescents often expanded upon these neighborhood environmental features, especially with references to positive and negative affect and resources. Overall, findings from study 2 underscore the importance using mixed methods to address the shared and unique aspects of researchers’ objectivity and adolescents’ phenomenology.
In study 1, I prospectively examined a model in which Mexican-origin parents’ perceptions of social and cultural resources in neighborhoods may support parents to engage in higher levels of cultural socialization and, in turn, promote adolescents’ ethnic-racial identity (ERI). Findings suggest neighborhood social and cultural cohesion in late childhood promoted middle adolescents’ ERI affirmation via intermediate increases in maternal cultural socialization. Similar patterns were observed for ERI resolution, but only for adolescents whose mothers were born in the United States. Findings have critical implications for how neighborhoods support parents’ cultural socialization practices and adolescents’ ERI.
In study 2, I used a convergent mixed methods research design to compare and contrast researchers’ neighborhood assessments collected using systematic social observations (e.g., physical disorder, sociocultural symbols) with adolescents’ qualitative neighborhood assessments collected by semi-structured interviews with Mexican-origin adolescents. Using quantitative methods, I found that researchers observed varying degrees of physical disorder, physical decay, street safety, and sociocultural symbols across adolescents’ neighborhood environments. Using qualitative methods, I found that adolescents observed these same neighborhood features about half the time, but also that they often layered additional meaning on top of distinct neighborhood features. Using mixed methods I found that, in the context of high spatial concordance, there was a high degree of overlap between researchers and adolescents in terms of agreement on the presence of physical disorder, physical decay, street safety, and sociocultural symbols. Lastly, adolescents often expanded upon these neighborhood environmental features, especially with references to positive and negative affect and resources. Overall, findings from study 2 underscore the importance using mixed methods to address the shared and unique aspects of researchers’ objectivity and adolescents’ phenomenology.
ContributorsPasco, Michelle Christine (Author) / White, Rebecca M. B. (Thesis advisor) / Seaton, Eleanor (Committee member) / Updegraff, Kimberly (Committee member) / Iida, Masumi (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
Ecological systems theory argues that multiple nested systems impact child development. This study used a moderated mediation pathway to examine whether presence of a grocery store, number of fast-food restaurants, outdoor play space, and outdoor play safety affected children’s blood pressure and BMI through variation in healthy family habits. Maternal perceived neighborhood social and cultural cohesion was examined as a moderator of the mediated effect. Data was collected from 214 mother–child dyads via biological measurement, maternal-report surveys, and geocoding of children’s neighborhoods using Google Earth. Zero-order correlations showed that higher number of fast-food restaurants in a child’s neighborhood was correlated with less engagement in healthy family habits and lower child BMI z-score. In all models, higher neighborhood social and cultural cohesion was associated with more engagement in healthy family habits. No statistically significant mediated effects or moderation of the mediated effects were found. Future directions may aim to identify which objective neighborhood environment indicators influence child health and what are potential variables mediating the relation.
ContributorsHernandez, Juan Carlos (Author) / Perez, Marisol (Thesis advisor) / Luecken, Linda (Committee member) / Anderson, Samantha (Committee member) / White, Rebecca (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020