The goals of the Latino Youth Care Project are as follows:

  • Document the linkages between contextual and person variables and Latino youth development.

  • Investigate these intervening person-level processes.

  • Examine the impact of acculturative stress, ethnic identity, and cultural values on Latino youth development.

Methods:

In order to accomplish the goals, our team of multidisciplinary researchers plan to use both age and culture sensitive measures of development and their antecedents. The study will include three hundred and fifty Mexican American teens between the ages of thirteen and sixteen years and their parents. These families will be chosen from communities in Nebraska in the United States. Interviews of all mothers and their teens will be conducted to assess their person (e.g., ethnic identity, moral reasoning, empathy) and interpersonal (e.g., peer, parent and school connectedness) factors and their impact on youth outcomes.

Impacts:

The Latino Youth Care Project will provide findings useful to practitioners, schools, program developers, and social policy makers on important issues related to positive development in Latino families. The findings will be dispersed to community and social service agencies, in research publications, and at national and local professional conferences. Furthermore, the findings will inform current scientific theories, and further refine existing psychological and behavioral measures to be more applicable to Latino youth and their families. A group of junior scientists will also be given the opportunity to gain real-world experience in the field of research.