- Explore the linkages between Latino teenagers’ social environment (their family, school, friends, and community), their individual characteristics and their development.
- Examine the impact of acculturative stress, ethnic identity, and cultural values on Latino youth development.
- Identify factors that help Latino youth succeed in order to inform school and community programs that serve these youth and their families.
The study will include two hundred and fifty Latino teens between the ages of fourteen and seventeen years and their parents. The families come from several communities in Nebraska. Within each family, separate interviews are conducted with the participating teenager and one of the parents. Teenagers are asked about their experiences, feelings, attitudes, and behaviors; parents are asked about the family, their community, and their feelings. All responses are confidential.
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.
Research Team:
The project is being conducted by a multidisciplinary team of researchers from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the University of Missouri, Columbia. The team includes faculty members and students from the Departments of Psychology, Educational Psychology, and Children, Youth and Families at UNL and Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Missouri. Project interviewers come from the university or the local community, and many are bilingual.
Funding:
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number 1022744. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.