The proposed work is grounded in research from two areas: (a) stress-resistant or resilient youth, and (b) victimology. These literatures have been combined to address the issue of resilience in Black college students, given their ethnic heritage of oppression. This cultural heritage is thought to produce assumptive world beliefs in Blacks similar to those of persons who have experienced individual incidents of victimization. Blacks as a group view the world as less benevolent than do Whites and report less felt control than do Whites over the distribution of good and bad events. The question arises then of characteristics of the individual or environment that allow a subset of young Blacks to maintain a high self-esteem and personal efficacy, particularly in the face of mainstream culture which continues to devalue Black status? The present research will attempt to explore Afrocentrism, presence of a close/confiding relationship, attributional style and family environ as variables which contribute to resilience in Black college students. Participants in the study will be Black undergraduate students. More versus less resilient subjects will be discerned on the basis of grade point average, leisure activities, social relationships, self-esteem and personal efficacy. Paper and pencil questionnaires will be utilized by this investigator in several group administrations. A group aggregate analysis will be used to report the results. It is predicted that Black students characterized as more resilient will manifest a more integrated personal (high self-esteem) and group (high racial esteem) identity, be more likely to have a close/confiding relationship with a significant adult figure, and have a more well defined sense of their own efficacy, than will Black students characterized as less resilient.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UMASS/oai:scholarworks.umass.edu:dissertations-2707 |
| Date | 01 January 1994 |
| Creators | Butler, Karen Havens |
| Publisher | ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst |
| Source Sets | University of Massachusetts, Amherst |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest |
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