Abstract
Ethnic-racial identity (ERI) formation is a key developmental competency that contributes to adolescents’ sense of self and psychosocial adjustment. A randomized controlled trial (RCT) has demonstrated the efficacy of a universal school-based health promotion intervention program to positively influence adolescents’ ERI exploration and ERI resolution, compared to an attention control curriculum that was delivered by the same facilitators, had equivalent contact hours, and focused on post-secondary career and educational options. The current study extended prior tests of the RCT to better understand (a) how intervention-based ERI changes unfolded over two phases—temporally proximal pre- to post-test effects and long-term post-test effects across a 1-year follow-up period, and (b) identify for whom the intervention was more effective by testing theorized contextual moderators—baseline family ethnic socialization practices and youth ethnic-racial background (i.e., White majority vs. ethnic-racial minority). Bilinear spline growth models were used to examine longitudinal ERI trajectories in intervention and control groups across four survey assessments (baseline, 12 weeks, 18 weeks, 67 weeks; N = 215; Mage = 15.02; 49.1% female; 62.6% ethnic-racial minority). In support of an additive effect for the role of families in school-based interventions, post-test ERI exploration significantly increased (relative to the control group) to a greater extent for youth with higher (compared to lower) baseline levels of family ethnic socialization. ERI resolution significantly increased from pre- to post-test for ethnic-racial minority youth and also increased across the 1-year follow-up period for White youth in the intervention. These results highlight family ethnic socialization as a developmental asset for school-based ERI interventions and demonstrate differential pathways by which such interventions support ERI development for ethnic-racial minority and majority adolescents.
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Data Availability
The data are not publicly available. The analysis syntax is available from the corresponding author upon request.
Notes
Participants were invited to select all ethnic-racial identifications that apply to them. If they selected more than one group (n = 76), they were asked to select the group with which they identify the most.
There were no significant differences between participants randomized into the treatment and control conditions by gender, χ2(1) = 2.68, p = .10, or ethnic-racial minority/majority group, χ2(1) = 0.03, p = .87.
Spline models with an added quadratic function for potential curvilinear follow-up effects did not converge for ERI exploration and resolution; the number of latent growth parameters exceeded the number of measurement occasions.
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to the students, teachers, and school administrators who partnered with us in the development and testing of the Identity Project. We also thank the following individuals for their contributions to the research process and/or to the development of the Identity Project intervention: Diamond Bravo, Michelle Capriles-Escobedo, Chelsea Derlan, Sara Douglass, Lluliana Flores, Stefanie Martinez-Fuentes, Alicia Godinez, Elizabeth Harvey-Mendoza, Steven Hobaica, Nicole Hollis, Vanessa Martinez-Morales, Flavio Marsiglia, Danielle Seay, M. Dalal Safa, and Benjamin Smith.
Funding
This work was supported, in part, by the Latino Resilience Enterprise in the T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State University, the Dean’s Impact Fund at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and the National Science Foundation SBE Postdoctoral Research Fellowship under Grant No. 1911398 to the first and second authors. This study was not preregistered in an independent, institutional registry.
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All procedures performed involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the Arizona State University Institutional Review Board.
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Sladek, M.R., Umaña-Taylor, A.J., Wantchekon, K.A. et al. Contextual Moderators of a School-Based Ethnic-Racial Identity Intervention: The Roles of Family Ethnic Socialization and Ethnic-Racial Background. Prev Sci 22, 378–385 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-020-01166-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-020-01166-8