Delia Saenz

The Mexican American cultural values scale for adolescents and adults

This research evaluates the properties of a measure of culturally linked values of Mexican Americans in early adolescence and adulthood. The article discusses the items derived from qualitative data provided by focus groups in which Mexican Americans’ (adolescents, mothers, and fathers) perceptions of key values were discussed. The focus groups and a preliminary item refinement result in the 50-item Mexican American Cultural Values Scale (MACVS; identical for adolescents and adults) that includes 9 subscales. Analyses of data from two large previously published studies sampling Mexican American adolescents, mothers, and fathers provide evidence of the expected two correlated higher order factor structures, reliability, and construct validity of the subscales of the MACVS as indicators of values that are frequently associated with Mexican/Mexican American culture. The utility of this measure for use in longitudinal research and in resolving some important theoretical questions regarding dual cultural adaptation is discussed.

Economic hardship, neighborhood context, and parenting: Prospective effects on Mexican American adolescent’s mental health

This study examined family and neighborhood influences relevant to low-income status to determine how they combine to predict the parenting behaviors of Mexican–American mothers and fathers. The study also examined the role of parenting as a mediator of these contextual influences on adolescent internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Study hypotheses were examined in a diverse sample of Mexican–American families in which 750 mothers and 467 fathers reported on their own levels of parental warmth and harsh parenting. Family economic hardship, neighborhood familism values, and neighborhood risk indicators were all uniquely associated with maternal and paternal warmth, and maternal warmth mediated the effects of these contextual influences on adolescent externalizing symptoms in prospective analyses. Parents’ subjective perceptions of neighborhood danger interacted with objective indicators of neighborhood disadvantage to influence maternal and paternal warmth. Neighborhood familism values had unique direct effects on adolescent externalizing symptoms in prospective analyses, after accounting for all other context and parenting effects.

Ethnic Identity and Adaptation of Mexican American Youths in School Settings

The theoretical and research literature on school performance and attrition in Mexican American youths was reviewed in order to examine how their membership asAmericans of Mexican descent, and the social, cultural, and political contexts of their school settings, affect their psychological adaptation in schooL Traditional theoretical views about school achievement in ethnic minority youths were compared and contrastede It was concluded that the empirical research fails to differentiate among Hispanic groups in ways that could result in better predictions of dropout, and that prevailing theoretical views of underachievement have neither arrived at a theoretical synthesis nor explored the processes that lead to dropout. A social identity framework was proposed for achieving such a synthesis, and for promoting the understanding of ethnic and other social identity changes as mediators of the effects of environmental and individual variables on school achievement. Available theory and findings were reconceptualized in terms of social identity theory, and developmental issues were considered.

Designing Health Promotion Programs for Latinos

In this chapter we examine strategies in program design that include the politics of working with Latino1 communities. We also examine strategies for reaching hard-to-reach members of this population, for enhancing program effectiveness (effect size), and for maintaining initial gains in healthy behavior change. Our views are based on prior health promotion studies including our recent study, “Companeros en la Saltier” (Partners in Health), which is a church-based study of cancer-risk reduction among Latinas, that is, Latino women.2 Health promotion in Latino populations is challenging, particularly when working with Latinos who live in low-income, disrupted communities where many unhealthy environmental conditions compete with efforts at health promotion. This challenge calls for a deeper understanding of the cultural, social, and psychological factors that must be addressed in designing potent and effective programs that succeed in promoting sound health in various Latino populations.

Family and Neighborhood Fit or Misfit and the Adaptation of Mexican Americans

In this study, a person-environment fit model was used to understand the independent and combined roles of family and neighborhood characteristics on the adjustment of adults and children in a sample of 750 Mexican American families. Latent class analysis was used to identify six qualitatively distinct family types and three quantitatively distinct neighborhood types using socioeconomic and cultural indicators at each level. The results showed that members of single-parent Mexican American families may be particularly at-risk, members of the lowest-income immigrant families reported fewer adaptation problems if they lived in low-income neighborhoods dominated by immigrants, members of economically successful immigrant families may be more at-risk in integrated middle class neighborhoods than in low-income neighborhoods dominated by immigrants, and members of two-parent immigrant families appear to be rather resilient in most settings despite their low socioeconomic status.

A test of the social development model during the transition to junior high with Mexican American adolescents.

Mexican American adolescents have higher rates of externalizing problems than their peers from other ethnic and racial groups. To begin the process of understanding factors related to externalizing problems in this population, this study used the social development model (SDM) and prospective data across the transition to junior high school from 750 diverse Mexican American families. In addition, the authors examined whether familism values provided a protective effect for relations within the model. Results showed that the SDM worked well for this sample. As expected, association with deviant peers was the primary predictor of externalizing behaviors. There was support for a protective effect in that adolescents with higher familism values had slower rates of increase in association with deviant peers from 5th to 7th grades than those with lower familism values. Future research needs to determine whether additional culturally appropriate modifications of the SDM would increase its usefulness for Mexican American adolescents.

Attributions of Fathering Behaviors Among Adolescents The Role of Gender, Ethnicity, Family Structure, and Depressive Symptoms

Little attention has been paid to how early adolescents make attributions for their fathers’ behavior. Guided by symbolic interaction theory, we examined how adolescent gender, ethnicity, family structure, and depressive symptoms explained attributions for residential father behavior. A total of 382 adolescents, grouped by ethnicity (European American, Mexican American) and family structure (intact, stepfamilies), reported attributions for their fathers’ positive and negative behaviors. Results indicated that for positive events, girls made significantly more stable attributions, whereas boys made more unstable attributions. Mexican American adolescents tended to make more unstable attributions for positive events than European Americans, and adolescents from intact families made more stable attributions for positive events than adolescents from stepfamilies. Implications are discussed for the role of attributions in father–adolescent relationships as prime for intervention in families.