Carolyn M. Tucker

Promoting Teacher Efficacy for Working With Culturally Diverse Students

Teachers exert a potent influence over the achievement of all students, low-income culturally diverse students in particular. Although recent research has confirmed that teacher involvement is critical for promoting academic engagement of low-income and ethnically diverse students, other literature suggests that teachers have lower expectations for and fewer interactions with these children. These findings have prompted calls for promoting teacher self-efficacy for working with children from diverse backgrounds. The purposes of this article are (a) to summarize briefly the literature that examines the effect of teacher efficacy on academic and behavioral outcomes of students, especially culturally diverse students; (b) to disseminate the findings of a teacher-training program designed to promote teacher efficacy in relation to culturally diverse students; and (c) to provide teachers, administrators, and teacher trainers with methods to increase teacher efficacy when working with culturally diverse learners.

Health Value, Perceived Social Support, and Health Self-Efficacy as Factors in a Health-Promoting Lifestyle.

During their college years, students may adopt healthpromoting lifestyles that bring about long-term benefits. Objective and Participants: The purpose of this study was to explore the roles of health value, family/friend social support, and health self-efficacy in the health-promoting lifestyles of a diverse sample of 162 college students. Methods: Participants completed an Assessment Battery consisting of the following instruments: (1) a demographic questionnaire, (2) the Multi-Dimensional Support, (3) the Value on Health Scale, (4) the Self-Rated Abilities for Health Practices, (5) the Health-Promoting Lifestyle Profile II, and (6) the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale. Results: Correlational analyses indicated that health value, perceived family/friend social support, and health self-efficacy were significantly associated with engagement in a health-promoting lifestyle. An analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) revealed that health value and health self-efficacy significantly predicted the level of engagement in a health-promoting lifestyle. Perceived family/friend social support was not significant in the model. As age increased, level of perceived family/friend social support decreased. Conclusion: Present findings suggest that health interventions programs focus on assessing and increasing health self-efficacy and health value of these youth. College health professionals can design and evaluate the effectiveness of such health-promoting interventions.

Patient-centered culturally sensitive health care: model testing and refinement.

OBJECTIVES This article presents the results of an empirical test of a literature-based Patient-Centered Culturally Sensitive Health Care Model. The model was developed to explain and improve health care for ethnically diverse patients seen in community-based primary care clinics. DESIGN Samples of predominantly low-income African American (n = 110) and non-Hispanic White American (n = 119) patients were recruited to complete questionnaires about their perceived health care provider cultural sensitivity and adherence to their providers treatment regimen recommendations. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Patients completed written measures of their perceived provider cultural sensitivity, trust in provider, interpersonal control, satisfaction with their health care provider, physical stress, and adherence to provider-recommended treatment regimen variables (i.e., engagement in a health promoting lifestyle, and dietary and medication adherence). RESULTS Two-group path analyses revealed significant links between patient-perceived provider cultural sensitivity and adherence to provider treatment regimen recommendations, with some differences in associations emerging by race/ethnicity. CONCLUSION The findings provide empirical support for the potential usefulness of the Patient-Centered Culturally Sensitive Health Care Model for explaining the linkage between the provision of patient-centered, culturally sensitive health care, and the health behaviors and outcomes of patients who experience such care.

Do family environments and negative cognitions of adolescents with depressive symptoms vary by ethnic group

The authors investigated the unique associations between family cohesion, family conflict, and depression for African American and European American adolescents (aged 12-17 years). In addition, they tested the influence of a cognitive variable on these relationships. Statistical analysis yielded some provocative findings. Specifically, low family cohesion was uniquely associated with depression for African American adolescents, whereas high family conflict uniquely predicted depression for European American adolescents. Also, a cognitive variable, high self-discrepancy, mediated the effect for the European American adolescents, but not for African American adolescents when analyses were conducted separately by ethnic group. In follow-up analyses, however, this descriptive finding did not meet conventional criteria for establishing moderated mediation. Implications for future research and for designing interventions and prevention strategies for children with depression are discussed.

Providing Patient-Centered Culturally Sensitive Health Care A Formative Model

This article describes the literature-based, testable, formative Patient-Centered Culturally Sensitive Health Care Model that explains the associations between patient-centered culturally sensitive health care, health-promoting treatment behaviors, and health outcomes and statuses. An intervention program based on the model and its foundational research are also described. In addition, the article summarizes research concerning the ongoing evaluation of the model and the intervention program as well as the development of pilot inventories to assess patient-centered culturally sensitive health care in community-based primary care clinics.

Demographic and medical predictors of medication compliance among ethnically different pediatric renal transplant patients

Abstract: Medication adherence in African‐American and European‐American pediatric renal transplant recipients was evaluated by four separate measures. Demographic and medical factors were analyzed. Based on pill count/refill history, European‐American females were more compliant than their male counterparts. Based on self‐ratings of compliance, African‐American recipients were more compliant if they had vs. had not had dialysis experience prior to their transplant. These recipients also had higher self‐ratings of compliance if their donors were cadaveric rather than living related.

Predictors of a Health-Promoting Lifestyle and Behaviors Among Low-Income African American Mothers and White Mothers of Chronically Ill Children

This study used Health Self-Empowerment (HSE) Theory as a framework for examining the predictors of engagement in both a health-promoting lifestyle and individual health-promoting behaviors among low-income African American mothers and non-Hispanic white mothers (N = 96), each of whom is the primary caregiver for a chronically ill adolescent. The individual health-promoting behaviors investigated are eating a healthy diet, exercising consistently, stress management practices, and health responsibility behaviors. The examined HSE Theory-based predictor variables were health self-efficacy, active coping, health motivation, and health self-praise. Multiple regression analyses revealed that these predictor variables together accounted for a significant amount of variance (67%) in level of engagement in a health-promoting lifestyle. Additionally, active coping, health self-praise, health self-efficacy, and health motivation were significant individual predictors of 1 or more individual health-promoting behaviors. Findings from this study suggest that further research should be conducted to assess the usefulness of HSE Theory in predicting level of engagement in health-promoting behaviors and to examine the effectiveness of HSE Theory-based interventions for increasing health-promoting behaviors among women similar to those in this study. The findings also suggest that health care providers should promote active coping, health self-praise, health self-efficacy, and health motivation to increase health-promoting behaviors among patients who are similar to those in this study.

The Roles of Counseling Psychologists in Reducing Health Disparities

This article presents an overview of the health disparities problem that exists among individuals from ethnic minority and low-income backgrounds and their majority counterparts. The argument is made that the involvement of counseling psychologists in addressing this health disparities problem presents an opportunity for the field to remain true to its commitment to prevention, multiculturalism, and social justice while becoming more competitive in the health care and health promotion fields. This article highlights the prevalence of health disparities and identifies the primary factors contributing to these disparities. In addition, the roles and approaches that counseling psychologists can adopt to help alleviate this problem are specified.

Associations with medication adherence among ethnically different pediatric patients with renal transplants

This study examined perceived medication regimen characteristics as factors in levels of medication adherence among 26 African American and 42 European American pediatric renal transplant patients. Among both groups, perceived characteristics of their medication regimen, including pill size, pill taste and medication complexity, were found to have significantly low to moderate associations with medication adherence. These associations were stronger and more consistent across medication adherence measures among the African American patients. This supports the need to separately examine the factors contributing to medication adherence among ethnically different pediatric patients. Suggestions for promoting medication adherence among pediatric patients with renal transplants and implications for future research are discussed.

Family behavior, adaptation, and treatment adherence of pediatric nephrology patients

In this exploratory study we investigated the relationships among family behavior variables (e.g., family expressiveness), adaptive functioning skills, maladaptive behavior, and adherence to treatment in pediatric renal failure patients. The study included 22 pediatric outpatients with renal failure who had not yet received dialysis or transplantation (RF) and their parents, and 12 pediatric outpatients with kidney transplants (TX) and their parents. For the RF patients, significant correlations were found between some of their adaptive functioning skills and measures of their medication adherence, diet adherence, and clinic appointment adherence; however, for the TX patients significant correlations were found only between some of their adaptive functioning skills and measures of their medication adherence. For the RF patients only, some measures of their family behavior were significantly correlated with measures of their medication adherence and diet adherence. Additionally, some measures of the RF patients′ family behavior were significantly related to their communication skills, socialization skills, overall adaptive functioning skills, and maladaptive behavior. For the TX patients, only their socialization skill level was significantly correlated with one measure of their family behavior. It is concluded that facilitation of adaptive and physical functioning among renal pediatric patients likely requires multidimensional training and/or counselling interventions with the children and their families, and that some of the content and/or emphasis of this training likely needs to differ for RF patients versus TX patients.