Five student-researchers and the author engaged in a continually-evolving, student-driven qualitative research study. Despite significant disadvantages, including navigating a. foreign culture without speaking the language, these invulnerable learners succeeded. Ultimately of greatest interest to the six were an analysis of their collective knowledge and experiences, and their individual transformation over the course of the study. The findings are organized around emergent themes and their evidence. Themes participants identified include resilience, the Mexican family, teachers and education, Mexican pride, and misconceptions about Mexicans. Resilience: A combination of personal resources (e.g., resilience) and environmental resources helped student participants to feel cared about, supported, and significant in school. Schools, as external mediators, were critical environmental resources in alleviating negative effects of student participants' stress. Family: Families, especially participants' parents, were their greatest source of motivation, inspiration, and support. The five student participants' concluded that the best means of promoting the ability to avoid problems is to instill in children early on a strong, non-negotiable value system. Teachers and Education: Participants and their families viewed education, and related necessary sacrifices, as key to success in this country. Academic frustrations included often-unchallenging curricula, isolation in the English as a Second Language program, and being treated as "less than" by teachers and peers. Pride in Being Mexican: The five expressed strong pride in being Mexican, and chose to demonstrate this through showing the dominant culture that Mexicans are capable, intelligent, hard-working people. Participants were also committed to serving as role models and counselors to those struggling as they had. Misconceptions about Mexicans: Interdependence, generosity, altruism, and camaraderie are attributes highly valued among most Mexican individuals. Misconceptions about Mexicans abound and are exacerbated by the American media. / Graduation date: 2000

The sociocultural model of eating disorders suggests that awareness of a thin physical ideal directly affects internalization of that ideal, which in turn, directly affects body dissatisfaction. The current study evaluated the general accuracy of the sociocultural model and examined the potential for ethnicity to protect against eating disorder symptomatology by moderating the relationships between awareness and internalization and between internalization and body dissatisfaction. Spanish (n = 100), Mexican American (n = 100), and Euro-American (n = 100) female participants completed various questionnaires measuring sociocultural attitudes towards appearance and body dissatisfaction. Analysis of covariance with tests of homogeneity of slope and path analysis using maximum likelihood with robust standard errors tested the two relationships by ethnic group. Results supported the sociocultural model: there was strong evidence for the mediational effect of internalization on the relationship between awareness and body dissatisfaction. Furthermore, ethnicity moderated the relationships such that both relationships were significantly stronger for Euro-American women than for Mexican American or Spanish women. Within the Mexican American group level of acculturation also moderated these relationships. Taken together, the results of this study highlight how ethnicity can protect against the development of eating disorder symptoms. Denouncing the thin ideal, minimizing appearance as an indicator of female value, and emphasizing personal traits other than appearance as determinants of worth are important in protecting against the development of body dissatisfaction and more severe eating pathology.

In order to better understand the specific mechanisms that may hinder high educational achievement among Latino students, this study explored the impact of parental working hours on parental involvement and school outcomes across three generations of Mexican-American youth. Results from a longitudinal data set revealed that constrained parental availability, related to increased working hours, had an impact on the amount of parental involvement for third generation students, but not on their academic outcomes. For first-generation students, parental monitoring (a form of parental involvement) was a significant positive predictor for grade 8 and 10 reading scores as well as high school completion among second-generation students. Results from this study suggest that increased parental monitoring may be beneficial for higher academic outcomes for first and second generation students. Future research will need to investigate what types of parental involvement may influence third generation students.

In order to better understand the specific mechanisms that may hinder high educational achievement among Latino students, this study explored the impact of parental working hours on parental involvement and school outcomes across three generations of Mexican-American youth. Results from a longitudinal data set revealed that constrained parental availability, related to increased working hours, had an impact on the amount of parental involvement for third generation students, but not on their academic outcomes. For first-generation students, parental monitoring (a form of parental involvement) was a significant positive predictor for grade 8 and 10 reading scores as well as high school completion among second-generation students. Results from this study suggest that increased parental monitoring may be beneficial for higher academic outcomes for first and second generation students. Future research will need to investigate what types of parental involvement may influence third generation students.

The migration morbidity hypothesis suggests that stress events inherent in immigration contribute to an increase in psychopathology. Assessing and investigating migration-morbidity among children of Mexican origin and Mexican American mothers living in the United States is the focus of the current study. Participants in the study were 133 students in 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades residing in the U.S. A replication of the ASEBA Teacher Report Form (TRF) Post-Traumatic Stress Problems (PTSP) scale factor structure was conducted to determine its utility for children of Mexican and Mexican American mothers. Item-level confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to evaluate the adequacy of the PTSP scale model. Three models were evaluated using a CFI, RMSEA, and WRMR to determine fit. Results using dichotomous TRF responses and omitting item 8, which includes information about a child's ability to concentrate, yielded a CFI = 0.956, RMSEA = 0.071, and WRMR = 0.862. Standardized factor loadings ranged from 0.484 to 0.976. The ASEBA TRF was used to gather information about a teacher's perception of problem behaviors in the classroom. Information was gathered for two groups: children of Mexican and children of Mexican American mothers residing in south Texas. An ANOVA determined that teachers observed a statistically significant difference (p = .04, d = 0.37) in happiness between groups with children born of Mexican origin mothers and rated as less happy than their peers born to Mexican American mothers. Children did not differ in other measures of behavior. The students resided in a primarily Mexican American/Mexican community, which could have impacted the results. In addition, the sensitive nature of the study may have impacted the low return rate. Implications of the study and their impact on education and immigrant mental health are discussed.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the reliability and validity of the results of the Naglieri Nonverbal Ability Test (NNAT; Naglieri, 1997a) with a sample of English Language Learner (ELL) Mexican American children and to compare the performance on the NNAT of 122 ELL Mexican American children with children from the standardization sample. The rationale for conducting this study was the need to identify culturally sensitive and technically adequate nonverbal measures of ability for the fastest growing minority group within America’s public schools today, Mexican American children. The NNAT was administered to participants with parental consent. Statistical analyses of the scores did yield positive evidence of internal consistency for the Nonverbal Ability Index (NAI) total score of the NNAT. However, when individual clusters were analyzed, Pattern Completion, Reasoning by Analogy, and Serial Reasoning did not yield positive evidence of internal consistency. Only Spatial Visualization approached the reliability standard deemed acceptable for tests of cognitive ability. The mean differences of the NNAT scores between two independent groups were also assessed in the present study. Results of the statistical analyses did not yield statistically significant differences across age and grade factors between the scores of the ELL Mexican American sample and the standardization sample. Finally, the proposed factor structure of the NNAT was compared with the factor structure found with the ELL Mexican American sample. Goodness-of-fit test statistics indicate that the proposed four-factor structure does not fit well with the data obtained from this sample of ELL Mexican American students. Furthermore, although the NNAT is considered to be a unidimensional test of general ability, nine factors were extracted upon analysis, providing evidence that the items on each of the four clusters do not function together as four distinct dimensions with this ELL Mexican American sample. Given that the individual clusters that collectively combine to yield the NAI total score are not based on any particular model of intelligence, interpretation of specific strengths and weaknesses should be discouraged. Finally, the NNAT’s overall score should be interpreted with caution and may best be used in conjunction with multidimensional ability and/or intelligence measures.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2009. / Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 221-229).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 338-350). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI/Dissertation Abstracts International.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 338-354).