Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Housing, The Neighborhood Environment, And Physical Activity Among Older African Americans, Lonnie Hannon Iii, Patricia Sawyer, Richard M. Allman

Journal of Health Disparities Research and Practice

Abstract

This study examines the association of neighborhood environment, as measured by housing factors, with physical activity among older African Americans. Context is provided on the effects of structural inequality as an inhibitor of health enhancing neighborhood environments. The study population included African Americans participating in the UAB Study of Aging (n=433). Participants demonstrated the ability to walk during a baseline in-home assessment. The strength and independence of housing factors were assessed using neighborhood walking for exercise as the outcome variable. Sociodemographic data, co-morbid medical conditions, and rural/urban residence were included as independent control factors. Homeownership, occupancy, and length of …

Black Students' Classroom Silence In Predominantly White Institutions Of Higher Education, Mahajoy A. Laufer

Theses, Dissertations, and Projects

This qualitative study explored Black students' silence in classrooms at predominantly white institutions (PWIs) of higher education in the northeast United States. Fifteen student interviews revealed that teaching material centered on European-American culture and history influenced their silence. Participants perceived devaluing of people of color in course material and perceived that professors used and allowed racist language and opinions to pervade the classroom. Students negotiated the tension of having discordant views from the mainstream and at times, between other students of the same racial and cultural group. They often elected to speak out against perceived discrimination and remained silent in …

Women Of African Descent: Persistence In Completing A Doctorate, Vannetta L. Bailey-Iddrisu

Vannetta L. Bailey-Iddrisu

This study examines the educational persistence of women of African descent (WOAD) in pursuit of a doctorate degree at universities in the southeastern United States. WOAD are women of African ancestry born outside the African continent. These women are heirs to an inner dogged determination and spirit to survive despite all odds (Pulliam, 2003, p. 337).This study used Ellis’s (1997) Three Stages for Graduate Student Development as the conceptual framework to examine the persistent strategies used by these women to persist to the completion of their studies.

Summary Report: The State Of Black Entrepreneurship In The United States: Education, Labor Activity, And Access To Capital, Rebecca Tekula, Mary Tracy

Wilson Center for Social Entrepreneurship

No abstract provided.

Interaction Effects Of Multiple Levels Of Disadvantage And Kinship Foster Care In African American Youth, Anne Rufa

College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations

Child welfare services' current practice is to attempt to identify kinship foster settings first when removing a child from their home, a practice used disproportionately for African American youth. In this study, potential contextual factors of foster homes (i.e., community environment, caregiver's age, caregiver's physical health) were identified as possible moderators of the relationship between the type of out-of-home placement (i.e., kinship, other out-of-home placement) used and changes in internalizing and externalizing scores in African American youth. Results confirm a significant increase in internalizing and externalizing scores when youth are placed in kinship foster homes with caregivers who are older …

School Counselors' Activities In Predominantly African American Urban Schools, Lacretia T. Dye

Dissertations

Urban school reform has begun to penetrate the school counseling profession in both theory and practice. The American School Counseling Association’s National Model (ASCA, 2005), as well as the Transforming School Counseling Initiatives component of the Education Trust (2007) are initiatives within the school profession promoted, in part, as responses to urban school reform. In particular, the ASCA National model is a “call to action” for school counselors to promote student success by closing the existing achievement gap whenever found between students of color, poor students, or underachieving students and their more advantaged peers (ASCA, 2005). However, little information is …

The Mediating Role Of Emotion Regulation In The Relations Of Between Somatization And Internalizing Disorders In Children, Priscilla A. Khuanghlawn

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Somatic symptoms are a common experience of childhood and research suggests that specific populations, including girls and children who are African-American, may be more likely to experience and report somatic complaints. Although seen in developmentally typical populations, somatic symptoms are also often strongly linked with general psychopathology, especially internalizing disorders. The etiology of somatic symptoms is unclear, with the current literature suggesting various contributing causes. One such contributing factor includes emotional factors such as the management of emotional arousal through emotion inhibition, coping, and dysregulation. Using an African-American sample of 136 elementary school-aged children (47% boys) and their parents (86% …

Parenting Patterns In Urban African American Families: Raising Healthy Adolescents In The Context Of Economic Hardship And Community Violence, Donald Hamilton Tyler

College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations

The aims of the current study were to identify natural patterns of environmental risk conditions and parenting practices in African American families, assess the similarities and differences between the parenting patterns and mainstream parenting types, clarify the efficacy of each parenting pattern in reducing risk and promoting adolescent adjustment, consider key variables that may influence these processes, and thereby advance understanding of African American child rearing in social-ecological context. A case-centered approach featuring cluster analysis was utilized to permit exploration of multiple child rearing behaviors across the dimensions of parental warmth and control and to afford examination of multiple combinations …

Preventing Recidivism: Perspectivs On The Effectiveness Of The Juvenile Justice System In Meeting The Needs Of African American Youth With Ebd, Carmeann Foster

Master of Social Work Clinical Research Papers

Nearly two million young people, under the age of 18, are arrested each year nationwide (Gottesman & Schwarz, 2011). Of these youth, 70% are male, and 46 % are African American (McPherson & Sedlak, 2010). Approximately two thirds suffer from symptoms of aggression, depression or anxiety. Those who suffer from behavioral symptoms, 27% suffer from severe and persistent mental illness. (McPherson & Sedlak, 2010). Similar statistics exist within the Hennepin County justice system. These statistics paint a frightening picture of a system in which emotionally and behaviorally disturbed African American males are grossly overrepresented in both the local and national …

Stop Snitching: Hip Hop's Influence On Crime Reporting In The Inner City, Ladel Lewis

Dissertations

The “stop snitching” phenomenon is a social epidemic that is affecting inner cities from coast to coast. These street politics have an adverse effect on the way individuals in the inner city view cooperation with police. With hip hop culture claiming a larger stake on the global stage, and mainstream artists sparking attention by denouncing cooperation with authorities while reproving others that choose to do so, this research examines if a relationship exists between individuals that adhere to the “code of silence” and self-professed hip hoppers. While much has been written about the significance of hip hop culture on the …

In Their Own Words: The Lived Experiences Of Unemployed African American Men, Kenlana R. Ferguson

Dissertations

Due to staggering unemployment rates, African American men's experience with work in the U.S. has historically received widespread attention in the media and social science literature. Terms such as black male unemployment crisis, puzzle, epidemic and catastrophe have been used to describe the unemployment woes of black. Attempts at explaining why African American men are experiencing such difficulty in the world of work has been undertaken across the disciplines, however much of this work has amounted to nothing more than acknowledgement that isolating independent factors as causes does not suffice and that a more interdisciplinary framework is needed if we …

Overcoming Adversity: Resilience Of Low-Income, Nonresidential, Black Fathers, Erica Elizabeth Coates

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Objective. This study examined the factors associated with higher levels of paternal involvement among low-income, nonresidential, Black fathers. Method. Participants were 110 fathers of children up to the age of 10. Participants completed psychometrically sound measures of social support, spirituality, family of origin relationships, coparenting relationship quality, psychological well-being, motivation, conviction history, resilience, and father involvement. Results. A simultaneous multiple regression indicated that better psychological well-being and coparenting relationship quality and lower conviction rates since the birth of the child were significant predictors of higher levels of paternal involvement. Mediational analysis revealed that coparenting relationship quality partially mediated the relationship …

Parenting Stress Among White, Black, American Indian, And Hispanic Mothers, Yunju Nam, Nora Wikoff, Michael Sherraden

Center for Social Development Research

Parenting stress can have long-term effects on parents and children, but little is known about racial and ethnic differences in parenting stress. Using baseline survey data from a probability sample in the SEED for Oklahoma Kids experiment (N = 2,26), we examine parenting stress among White, Black, American Indian, and Hispanic mothers. This study employs OLS regressions and Blinder-Oaxaca decompositions. Parenting stress scores among Whites and American Indians were on average significantly lower than among Blacks and Hispanics. Regressions indicate that across all four groups, parenting stress is positively associated with maternal depression and negatively associated with social supports. Decomposition …

Exposure To Community Violence And Social Maladjustment Among Urban African American Youth: The Role Of Emotion Dysregulation, Devin Colleen Carey

Master's Theses

The goal of the present study was to further previous research that has focused on the detrimental outcomes of violence exposure by identifying the mechanisms that influence children's psychosocial vulnerabilities. Specifically, it examined emotion regulation as a possible mediator of community violence exposure to social adjustment. Moreover, because of the evidence that children living in inner city communities are chronically exposed to violence, this study longitudinally explored the reciprocal and perpetuating relationship between exposure to violence and child social maladjustment. Participants were 268 African American students (M age = 11.65 years, 40% males and 60% females) from six inner city …

Latinos, African Americans And The Coalitional Case For A Federal Jobs Program, Alan A. Aja, William Darity Jr., Darrick Hamilton

Ethnic Studies Review

In the late 1970s, amidst growing unemployment in black and Latino communities, the newly-formed Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) supported the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) in its call for full employment in the run up to the passage of the Humphrey-Hawkins Act of 1 978. Never fully implemented, the act has been de facto an unfunded mandate for close to 40 years. Only recently has it been resurrected by a handful of lawmakers, while both discussion and support for a national jobs program has begun to gain steam in the media and the general public. With support from labor market research …

Scarlet-Letter Politics: The Rhetoric Of Shame In The Campaign To Unseat President Barack Hussein Obama, Myra Mendible

Ethnic Studies Review

This essay considers the politics of racial shaming as deployed against Barack Obama, arguing that it targeted "black" and "foreign" bodies as threats to the "American" body politic.

Targeting Minorities: An Inductive Exploration Of The Fbi's Impact On Social Movements (19602-1970s), Crystal Jewel Bustillos

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This work undertakes the daunting task of examining the role of the FBI in targeting social movements which occurred during the 1960s and 1970s. It further explores the impact this targeting had on the Chicano movement by drawing comparisons between what transpired with the Chicano movement and comparing it to the African American movement. To this end, various archival data was gathered as well as primary sources and expert interviews.

Towards A Multidimensional Model Of Adaptation For African American Adolescents Exposed To Racial Discrimination, Jamila Cunningham

Dissertations

The purposes of the current study were to 1) examine the associations of racial discrimination to internalizing symptoms, externalizing symptoms and perceived life satisfaction in African American adolescents, and 2) determine Africultural cluster profiles based on indicators of racial socialization, racial identity and culturally relevant coping strategies 3) examine whether cluster profile buffers stress exposed African American adolescents from increased internalizing symptoms, anger and decreased life satisfaction. One hundred-fifty-one African American adolescents (grades 9th - 12th) from four high schools and a community group from a major Midwest city and a major city from the Southeast reported on exposure to …

Predictors Of Reactive Aggression Among African American And European American Children : The Role Of Perceived Discrimination, Racial Socialization, And Negative Affect, Marvella Alexandria Bowman

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Drawing upon the ecological systems perspective of Bronfenbrenner (1986) and Spencer's Phenomenological Variant of Ecological Systems Theory (PVEST; 1995, 2003), as well as a reformulation of the frustration hypothesis by Berkowitz (1989), the present study sought to examine a model positing that perceived discrimination acts as a risk factor for reactive aggression; that positive racial socialization messages would buffer against the impact of perceived discrimination on reactive aggression; and that negative affect mediates the relation between the interaction of discrimination and racial socialization and reactive aggression in a sample of 70 African American and European American children (9-13 years of …

What Factors Influence Positive Father Involvement In African American Families?, Courtney Lashay Pitts

LSU Master's Theses

While positive fathers appear to be a myth in African American communities among current research, this study looks at the common factors among involved fathers in inner city neighborhoods. In a secondary analysis of interviews from happily married Black couples in inner city neighborhoods, overlapping themes emerge exploring the reasons behind positive involvement among fathers. In twenty-two interviews, both husbands and wives explain reasons for continuous father involvement in the lives of their children. Findings include a heavy reliance on faith, marital support and commitment to matrimony and value of responsibility to one’s family. Future research and implications should address …