Understanding the Relationship between Racial Salience and Stress Adapted Coping in Minoritized Youth
Restricted (Penn State Only)
- Author:
- Rajagopalan, Adithi
- Graduate Program:
- Psychology
- Degree:
- Master of Science
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- April 26, 2022
- Committee Members:
- Martha Ellen Wadsworth, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Yo Jackson, Committee Member
Kristin Buss (She/Her), Program Head/Chair
Dawn Paula Witherspoon, Committee Member - Keywords:
- Race
racial salience
Minority
Stress
Coping
Poverty
Discrimination - Abstract:
- Racial and ethnic minority youth are often exposed to multiple stressors including poverty-related stress, discrimination, and violence and victimization. These various uncontrollable stressors have been repeatedly linked to poorer physical and mental health outcomes in adolescents. These youth are shown to be at an increased risk for greater internalizing and externalizing difficulties, academic problems, and health disparities. Given the significant influence of stress on child and adolescent development, understanding how youth exposed to these stressors cope, and particularly, factors that are promotive of adaptive coping, is important in developing effective interventions. This study aimed to understand (a) the different coping strategies, particularly primary and secondary engagement control coping, and disengagement coping, used by youth experiencing discrimination, poverty related stress and violence and victimization and (b) the promotive or protective nature of youths contextual racial identity, or racial salience, in the face of uncontrollable stressors. 11 and 12 year old students and their parents (N= 129 dyads) were assessed using measures of coping, racial identity, and stress exposure. Results indicate that discrimination stress, over and above other stressors, predicted stress-adapted coping, particularly demonstrated by lower reported utilization of primary and secondary control engagement coping. Additionally, results demonstrate that racial salience may be a promotive factor of disengagement coping and primary control coping, and violence and victimization may be promotive of secondary control coping. This study did not find that racial salience was a significant protective factor in coping utilization.