Thesis (Ed. Spec.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.

Political socialization, defined here as the internalization of supportive norms and values toward the political system, has received new impetus since the early 1960's. Students of the concept have launched a multi-frontal assault in order to accumulate data which will produce knowledge, understanding, and explanations about the state of the field.

The pachuco culture is a rich contemporary tradition born in the southwestern United States in the early 20th century. The innovative youth culture emerged in U.S.-Mexico border towns, but contemporary, urban-hip cholo forms are now found in cities in both countries, many distant from the border. Among working-class and informal sector youth partial to a particular dress style, (the zootsuit is best known), and a cryptic, hybrid language, being pachuco is a form of life with demonstrable continuity over sixty years, in social organization, language, and style. This research is the first ethnography with older men and women of the earliest Southwest generations associated with the culture. Their life history and linguistic narratives speak of the formative moments of being pachuco in Tucson, Arizona. The interpretive frameworks used by consultants are explored as they discuss history, culture, language and identity. To do this, I use recently developed theoretical tools in linguistic anthropology, especially the concepts of metapragmatics and indexicality (Silverstein 1985, 1979) and dialogicality (Bakhtin 1984, 1929). Uniquely among ethnographies of pachucos, I attend to the language use of women, their experiences and perspectives. The major findings are: (1) The youth culture was present in Tucson and the Southwest in at least 1929, if not earlier; (2) research on the regional Indian roots of the culture has been neglected; (3) females have participated in the youth culture from early on; (4) stigmatization and criminalization of the culture continues today in forms resembling the dynamics surrounding the so-called "Zootsuit Riots" of 1943; and (5) in linguistic theory, formulations relating to the transmission of indexical information may need reformulation to account for languages like Pachuco where the interplay of a number of systems creates a high degree of symbolic ambiguity.

The purposes of this study were twofold: (1) to compare rates of delinquency between Mexican American and European American adolescents, and (2) to test the application of a model of delinquency designed to be especially relevant to Mexican lll American adolescents. The study is one of the first attempts to advance knowledge about delinquency among Mexican American adolescents through the development and test of a comprehensive model of delinquency. The model constructed as part of this study-labeled the psychosocial strain model-was unique in that it integrated variables from different theoretical perspectives and its construction was guided by knowledge of cultural and demographic characteristics of Mexican Americans. The study used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), a large and nationally representative sample of adolescents. Analyses indicated that Mexican American adolescents engaged in a disproportionate amount of delinquency. Mexican American adolescents also tended to engage in delinquency at a greater and more serious level than European American adolescents. Results of path analysis used to test the psychosocial strain model revealed that the model explained a statistically significant amount of the variance in delinquency for both males and females. However, not all paths in the model were statistically significant. In addition, the results revealed important gender differences in the applicability of the model. Implications of the study findings and future research directions are discussed.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 183-192). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

The following study is a secondary data analysis of data collected in the first wave of the California Families Project investigating the impact that discrimination in academic settings may have on academic outcomes of Mexican American youths. Primary socialization theory offers a conceptual framework of competing socialization influences bearing particular relevance in understanding the role of discrimination in Mexican American youths. The present investigation also seeks to clarify the protective role of various parenting practices in regarding academic achievement. Three hundred sixty-five Mexican American families were surveyed and results indicated that discrimination significantly predicted negative academic self-efficacy and poorer academic performance in crystallized measures of ability (i.e., verbal skills) but not a performance-based task (i.e., visuospatial skills and processing speed). Findings suggested that the influence of parenting in mitigating discrimination for fifth graders is limited.

The purpose of this study was to determine relationships between acculturation level, generational status, and gender with acculturative stress. Acculturation level was determined by the Acculturation Rating Scale for Mexican Americans-II (ARSMA-II) and acculturative stress was determined by the Societal, Attitudinal, Familial and Environmental Acculturative Stress Scale-Children's Version (SAFE-C). Subjects included 1268 Hispanic children ages 11-15. In order to validate the usefulness of the ARSMA-II with this sample, analyses were conducted between acculturation level and generational status. The Pearson product moment correlation (r=.44) and the ANOVA between the mean acculturation score and generational status were significant. However, the mean acculturation score from this study was considerably lower than the ARSMA-II score; therefore, new acculturation levels were developed to establish local adolescent norms for the ARSMA-II. All analyses involving acculturation levels were conducted using both the ARSMA-II and new acculturation levels because 300 subjects were reclassified with the new norms. Significant results were similar using both acculturation levels; however, there were more between group differences using the new acculturation levels. It was hypothesized that as acculturation level increased toward the Anglo culture, acculturative stress would decrease. The one-way ANOVA confirmed this relationship. It was also hypothesized that as generational status increased, acculturative stress would decrease. A one-way ANOVA also supported this hypothesis. In order to replicate previous findings on gender, a one-way ANOVA was conducted with acculturative stress and acculturation level. Results for both were non-significant. Overall findings indicate that generational status and acculturation level have a significant impact on acculturative stress in Hispanic children; however, gender does not seem to be a factor. Findings emphasize the importance of addressing cultural issues in the assessment, intervention, and treatment of acculturating Hispanic children. Furthermore, the ARSMA-II appears to be a useful instrument in assessing acculturation level in young adolescent Hispanics though new local adolescent norms for the ARSMA-II were developed from this study.

No description available.

The study was concerned with the testing of a modified causal model of college anticipation and attendance for a nationwide sample of Puerto-Rican and Mexican-American high-school seniors. The key problem of this study was defined on the basis of two fundamental criteria. The first states that social-structural and social-psychological components of sociological theory can provide basic information needed to comprehend the educational aspirations and achievement behaviors of Hispanic youth in the United States. The second theoretical tenet of this study was that the logic of the modified Wisconsin Model of status attainment can be understood as a common process that applies to all sectors of the American system of stratification and mobility. The data used in this study were extracted from the High School and Beyond: A National Longitudinal Study for the 1980s (HSB) and its First Follow-Up. Path coefficients associated with the direct and indirect effects were used in attempting to explain the variance in postsecondary educational plans and attainments of the subjects. A summary of the most significant findings, using the aforementioned data follows. The analysis of the educational attainments for the two ethnic group subsamples shows no statistically significant difference when the two samples are classified by gender. The recursive causal model used in this analysis is not completely successful in explaining the variance in the dependent variables (postsecondary educational plans and attainments) of both Mexican-American and Puerto-Rican high-school seniors. As a result, only about one-fourth of the degree of change in postsecondary educational plans and less than one-half of the variability in the level of educational attainments are accounted for by the antecedent variables. Present results reduce the impact of some of the social-psychological intervening variables on the level of educational plans of Hispanic adolescents. On the other hand, the role of objective variables (academic achievement and socioeconomic status is magnified. The influence of some of the objective variables on the process of educational attainment is also noticeable.