Tovah Sands

The Relationship Between Latino Adolescents’ Perceptions of Discrimination, Neighborhood Risk, and Parenting on Self-Esteem and Depressive Symptoms

Guided by Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological framework, this study examined the roles of Latino adolescents’ reports of discrimination, neighborhood risk, parent-child conflict over culture, and parental support in relation to their self-esteem and depression. Analysis of self-report data from 383 ninth grade, Latino students from one Los Angeles high school was used to validate a Multigroup Structural Equation Model of self-esteem and depressive symptoms for boys and girls. As expected, self-esteem was negatively and significantly related to depressive symptoms, yet the influence of other factors were less clear. Five paths marked the influence of mothers’ and fathers’ interactions on youths’ outcomes, demonstrating a strong path from fathers’ support to adolescent self-esteem and differing paths from cultural conflict with mother and father to youth outcomes. Neighborhood risks were significantly related to boys’ and girls’ self-esteem and depressive symptoms, especially for boys. Societal discrimination was significantly related to youths’ reports of depressive symptoms yet not significantly related to self-esteem. Results are discussed in terms of applications for both practice and future research.

Neighborhood structural qualities, adolescents' perceptions of neighborhoods, and Latino youth development

The purposes of this research brief were to examine (a) whether youth reports of neighborhood qualities were significantly related to census data at the block group, measuring the same structural qualities and (b) whether the structural qualities were related to youth development either directly or indirectly through youth perceptions. Data were collected from three sources: self-report surveys, school records, and the 2000 U.S. census. A nonrandom sample of 534 Latino students from one high school in Los Angeles was used. Correlations and structural equation modeling (SEM) demonstrated that youth reports of neighborhoods were significantly related to the structural qualities. SEM demonstrated that the structural qualities were indirectly related to all four adolescent outcomes (i.e., self-esteem, self-efficacy, academic aspirations, grades) via adolescents’ perceptions.

A New Scale to Measure Adolescent Reports of Academic Support by Mothers, Fathers, Teachers, and Friends in Latino Immigrant Families

The purpose of this article was to report factor structures, reliability, and validity of the Significant Other Academic Support Scale from two different Latino samples of Mexican and Central American origin youth. Self-report data were collected from 394 Mexican and 220 Central American youth from immigrant families living in Los Angeles. Exploratory factor analyses indicated that the same four factors (i.e., academic support by mothers, fathers, teachers, and friends) emerged in both the Mexican and Central American samples. Also, high internal consistency reliabilities were found for all four subscales in both samples. The initial evidence of construct validity was provided through the tests of convergent validity, discriminant validity, and predictive validity.

Examining Predictors of Mexican American Adolescents’ Coping Typologies Maternal and Paternal Behaviors and Adolescent Gender

This study used latent profile analysis to develop coping typologies of 340, 14- to16-year-old Mexican American adolescents (M = 14.46, SD = 0.69). Three typologies were identified: (a) opposition coping (adolescents who tended to use anger and venting emotions), (b) support-seeking coping (adolescents who relied on seeking support), and (c) escape and opposition coping (adolescents who relied on anger, venting, substance-use coping, behavioral avoidance, and peer support). Three key parental behaviors (support, knowledge, psychological control) of mothers and fathers and adolescent gender were examined as predictors of the coping typologies. Results indicated that parental support and knowledge, particularly from mothers, predicted membership into the support-seeking coping typology relative to the other two typologies. Girls were more likely than boys to utilize support-seeking coping than opposition coping. Gender socialization norms that may have influenced these results are discussed.