Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

Looking Good and Taking Care: Consumer Culture, Identity, and Poor, Minority, Urban Tweens is an ethnographic examination of how poor, minority, urban tweens (age 7-14) use consumer culture to create and perform their personal and social identities. Although portrayed in mass media as selfish and hedonistic, this work finds tweens creating profoundly social, giving, and caring identities and relationships through consumption. Their use of consumer culture is also a form of political resistance that subverts their place in the age, class, and race hierarchy. These tweens use “looking good” (attention to grooming, style, and behaving respectably), and not name brand goods, to show they have respect for themselves, that their families care about them, and that, by extension, society in general should care for and about them. Far from seeking status through consuming, the tweens largely seek belonging and care. They also utilize both consumption and denial of their consumer desires to show care for their families. Furthermore, the tweens use consumer culture to enact resistance against the most tangible form of social control in their lives—school—by employing products and consumer knowledge to subvert the rules of uniforms and structured school time.

The achievement gap is an important problem with serious consequences for the United States’ economy. A long history of oppression has contributed to a substantial gap in achievement between students of minority status or low socioeconomic status and their white or higher income peers. Large scale efforts to address this problem have been unsuccessful in substantially reducing the problem. As parent involvement has been linked to student achievement, capitalizing on strong family-school partnerships offers a valuable opportunity to target student achievement. Low-income and minority parents face many barriers to parent involvement. If schools embrace a more inclusive view of parent involvement and collaborate with parents to reduce these barriers, however, successful family-school partnerships may be formed. Themes for creating such partnerships include recognizing that parents care about their children’s education and want them to succeed, treating parents as equal partners in the educational process, and using innovative techniques to solve problems. / text

Guided by the positive youth development (PYD) framework and the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions, this dissertation project involved the performance of two studies that were designed to explore the multifaceted aspects of personal and environmental sources of support, positive emotions, stress, depressive symptoms, and resilience. Examined in Study I was the question of whether one's positivity would differentiate levels of personal and environmental resources. Examined in Study II were the association, if any, between stress and resilience on depressive symptoms and whether resilience would exhibit a moderating effect of stress on depressive symptoms. Multivariate analysis of covariance and hierarchical multiple regression were used to test the different models in these studies. A sample of 510 students at an all-girl public middle and high school completed the survey (75% response rate). Results showed that (a) the different categories of positivity distinguished levels of personal and environmental resources, (b) stress had a significant positive direct effect on depressive symptoms, (c) resilience had a significant negative direct effect on depressive symptoms, and (d) the interaction between stress and resilience had a significant buffering effect on depressive symptoms. While adolescence is a challenging time in particular for girls, findings from the present study support PYD and the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions as advantageous frameworks for developing empirically based interventions. Strategies that increase students' positive emotions in schools, which in turn broaden their thinking, coping, and social interactions, would be efficacious. Further, the results from Study II suggest that students with higher levels of resiliency were protected from the impact of stress, thus potentially explaining their lower scores for depressive symptoms compared to those students with lower levels of reported resilience. This supports the significant role of individual resiliency as a personal resource against depressive symptoms when experiencing higher levels of stress. Given the seriousness of declining psychological well-being in young girls as a major public health concern, coupled with the compounding effects later into life, programs that provide opportunities for young girls to cultivated resiliency will be, theoretically, highly effective. / text

Belonging is a basic and fundamental human need (Baumeister, & Leary, 1995) that is associated with psychosocial health (Cohen, 2004). Unfortunately, community belonging is a challenge for those with a bisexual identity. Binegativity, minority stress, and the invisibility of bisexual-identities may interfere with attempts to develop a sense of community belonging (Bradford, 2004). Little systematic research has examined bisexual-identified people’s perceptions and experiences of belonging to a community. This project addressed the question, “What are bisexual individuals’ experiences of community belonging/social exclusion?” Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a sample of 12 bisexual-identified persons. Interview transcripts were analyzed using a constructivist grounded theory methodology (Charmaz, 2006). Findings indicated that bisexual-identified persons encountered stigma and at times concealed their sexuality in order to create community belonging. However, risking authenticity, rather than concealing identity, seemed to help participants deal with stigma and develop more meaningful community belonging. Bisexual-identified persons who risk disclosing their identity and develop a sense of authenticity may increase their opportunities for community belonging. These findings are discussed in relation to their implications for counseling bisexual-identified persons and educating the communities in which they live.

Health communications providers strive to increase the health literacy of patients and care takers. Basic health literacy is a measure of a person’s ability to understand and act according to appropriate health information. The rise in the number of people attaining basic health literacy increases the amount of positive health behavior in the aggregate. Therefore, health communication providers can create a direct impact on tangible health results in a given population. The introduction of new technology has led to new ways of distributing health information, specifically through online media. Along with a new method of communication comes a need for a new way of evaluating it. As new media emerge and proliferate in the marketplace, different populations’ levels of health literacy become shaped in previously unpredictable ways. Current research suggests that significant differences in wealth and pervasive cultural features account for why distinct populations respond to these developments differently. Thus, the task of determining health communications’ success overall just got harder. It is now necessary to reassess health communications providers’ efficiency and effectiveness with regard to particular minority populations such as Hispanic/Latino adults. Throughout this paper, I refer to the Hispanic/Latino population’s unique characteristics as a case study for the derivation and application of universal health communication values. Thus, the purpose of this report is, based on current findings, to expose the primary values that describe and prescribe the efficacy of online health communication geared towards minorities such as Hispanic/Latino adults residing in the United States. This report concludes that the effectiveness of health information online is a function of three elements: access, quality, and communication strategy. Access represents the extent to which the intended user can search online for the sought-after health information, employ techniques to locate the intended information, and benefit from the search and comprehend the content. The quality prong of the health related Web content represents the useful indicia of accuracy and completeness of the information provided. The first two factors are a sine qua non for a robust health communication campaign. The communication strategy determines the audience reach and the relevance of the health message; both of which ultimately are the driving force for achieving lasting health behavior modification. Health information providers must periodically assess their services along the model’s benchmarks in order to achieve the highest possible levels of health literacy in their target populations and overall. Providers may engage in self-evaluation in order to gauge their own effectiveness, make improvements wherever necessary, and thereby ensure continued conformity to the aforementioned values. If/when these market players are unable or unwilling to adhere to this rubric, the public sphere may need to enforce it as a last resort. This paper does not investigate the merits of either public or private systems of governance; no matter how compliance is achieved, the modern promotion of optimal health literacy in minority communities (and hence, overall) requires that all three elements comprise a new, uniform model for online health communication initiatives. / text

The promises of the open door community college system have helped people from all walks of life access and achieve higher education credentials. Numerous community college graduates transferred to other universities to continue their academic pursuits or entered the emerging career areas with skills that afford those wages and lifestyles that allow them to support their families, contribute as tax payers and full participants in the American Dream. For many African American and Latino men, the hope of achieving a college degree was realized through their involvement in a special student success program that offered mentoring, academic support, life skills necessary for managing personal and professional relationships, financial literacy and friendships with peers built on honesty, integrity, and accountability agreements. Many of these programs, though life changing for participants, were small in scale, are not supported across institutions, lacked broad involvement from faculty members, and were limited in their scope. Long term sustainable program plans must include issues related to scalability, replication; financial and strategic plans; common measures of effectiveness that eliminate current achievement and attainment gaps President Obama along with other policy groups has challenged 2-year colleges to help America lead all other nations in producing the largest percentage of adults with a college credential. This research used a qualitative case study approach to collect, review, and analyze 82 community college minority male student success programs. To broaden the research study pertinent to what measures of evidence are used to determine effectiveness, program directors and participants were interviewed with a semi-structured approach. Data were analyzed and greater clarity of the problems many men of color face and the programs designed to increase their academic, career and workforce success. To close the gender and racial gaps identified demands holistic solutions between and among private, public, governmental, social, cultural, academic, and financial organizations. Our global knowledge economy demands college presidents, governing board members, faculty, staff, community, faith-based institutions, and men of color to collaborate and create, and improve and strengthen the chances for more minority men to attain college credentials. / text

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

Sexual minorities or those minoritized as a result of the expressed or assumed sexual orientations and identities (i.e., lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer), by virtue of their sometimes stigmatized identities, oftentimes report deleterious and unprovoked experiences of harassment, victimization, and prejudice. For several decades, research has confirmed that lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals are at high risk for maladaptive outcomes, including higher rates of suicidality, depression, substance use and abuse, and anxiety disorders. The goal of this dissertation was to 1) document and compare these disparities across two cultures, 2) disentangle social support systems that are important to sexual minorities, and 3) identify factors that best protect sexual minorities against the effects of bias-based bullying. Large datasets were used to compare, understand, and trace the processes of interpersonal relational support on adjustment for sexual minorities. Specifically, different cultural normativities were hypothesized to explain differences in adjustment across culture, parent support was hypothesized to be most associated with lower depression and higher self-esteem, and parent acceptance was expected to buffer the relation between bias-based bullying and depression for sexual minorities. These expectations were generally supported and demonstrate the clear role that parents and friends contribute to mental health for sexual minorities. Implications for future research, parents, teachers, and other stakeholders are discussed in different contexts of sexual minority adjustment.

The present study examines the issue of minority participation in a multi-faceted prevention program for youth with problem behavior. Historically, participation in such research programs has been low (Myers, Alvy, Richardson, Arrington, Marigna, Huff, Main, & Newcomb, 1990; Coie, 1996; Spoth & Redmond, 2001). Targeted prevention programs, which design their interventions for populations that are susceptible to negative outcomes, face more obstacles to participation than most participants of universal prevention programs. Targeted populations, specifically families with children with problem behavior, are usually under great duress, suffer multiple hardships, and have high adversity characteristics, (e.g., low socioeconomic status, insularity, single-parent families, and low levels of education). As has long been documented, minority status is usually associated with this heightened risk status (Prinz & Miller, 1991). A common suggestion in the prevention and therapeutic treatment literature is the use of minority staff members to increase the likelihood of participation of minority parents (Prinz, Smith, Dumas, Laughlin, White & Barron, 2001). This argument is most prevalent in the literature regarding Latino clients (Sue, Fujino, Hu, Takeuchi, & Zane, 1991). This study attempts to predict minority parents' participation quality (PQ) from demographic variables (e.g., level of adversity, ethnicity), participation rate (PR) (e.g., amount of participation measured by minutes and contacts), and ethnic matching. This study also offers insight on how PQ and PR relate to one another. The results of this study imply that PQ and PR relate differently for Latino parents than they do for parents from other ethnicities. The relationship of these variables has implications for frequency of dosages in an intervention, especially for interventions that attempt to reach distinct populations.