Browsing by Subject "Hispanic"

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Utilizing data from The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), the current study examined the relationship between cultural values, coping behavior, and HIV risk behaviors among African-American/Black and Hispanic/Latino adolescents (N = 437). The goal of this research was to provide the first step towards testing the construct validity of a theoretical model in which values and cultural context contribute to coping behaviors and coping, in turn, mediates the association between values and HIV risk profile. African-American participants endorsed higher levels of Africentric and religious values than did Hispanic participants and endorsed higher utilization of religious coping. Cultural values including familismo and religiosity were associated with more adaptive coping behavior and lower sexual and substance use risk behaviors across racial/ethnic groups. Results for other cultural values were inconsistent. Coping behavior predicted substance use risk behaviors but was not associated with sexual risk behaviors. Mediation was not supported except in the case of religious coping and religiosity. Implications for HIV prevention and directions for future research are discussed.

State and local governments are seeking to expand preschool programs for low-income children and to enroll an increasingly ethnically and culturally diverse population. To ensure that expanded preschools equitably serve populations who are currently under-represented in current preschool programs, policymakers must understand the contexts that influence parents’ enrollment decisions. This set of three mixed-methods studies examines the influence of inter-racial and inter-ethnic group relations on the preschool enrollment decisions of black and Hispanic parents in a region experiencing a burgeoning Hispanic population.

Paper 1: Historic and contemporary studies provide evidence that racial and ethnic relations affect parents’ selection in to and out of schools in the K-12 education context. However, no study examines whether racial and ethnic group relations that influence school enrollment in the K-12 setting may also influence parents’ selection in to or out of a public preschool program. This study addresses this gap by examining how intergroup relations are related to the public preschool enrollment status of low-income black and Hispanic parents in a region experiencing Hispanic population growth. Intergroup relations are measured through group identity, linked fate, competition and conflict. Through surveys of black and Hispanic parents in poverty (n=369), this study finds that linked fate has a negative relationship with enrollment for Hispanic parents. In addition, there is a positive relationship between parents’ report of conflict and Head Start enrollment.

With states and local government seeking to expand their preschool systems, findings that intergroup relations influence parents’ preschool enrollment decisions

will be an important policy, program, and outreach consideration for preschool expansion. Moreover, with the growth and dispersal of Hispanic populations into new regions and communities, intergroup relations will be a particularly important consideration for preschool expansion in a growing demographic context.

Paper 2: As state and local governments expand their public preschool systems targeting the enrollment of children from low-income families, understanding why some low-income families do not apply for public preschool may provide insights about barriers to enrollment. This study provides cluster analyses of data on 369 low-income parents with preschool-age children; 202 parents had children enrolled in preschool, while 167 parents did not apply for public preschool. Cluster analyses and a series of robustness checks reveal two distinct typologies of parents who do not apply for public preschool. The first group of parents exhibit several characteristics associated with non-enrollment. The second group of parents are distinguishable only by their lack of transportation. This exploratory analysis of types of non-enrollers is informative for the local community from which these data were derived and provides a blueprint for further examination of typologies of parents who do not enroll.

Paper 3: Through in-depth interviews with 34 low-income, black and Hispanic mothers in a southern city experiencing a burgeoning Hispanic population, this study examines racial/ethnic relations as mothers engage in constrained labor and public preschool markets. This study reveals that while there is indeed a sense of competition for scarce labor market resources, these sentiments are more strongly expressed by black mothers than by Hispanic mothers. However, Hispanic and black mothers express similar levels of competition for public preschool. Interviews reveal family structure and policy determinants of intergroup tensions.

The Hispanic Protestant population of the United States has grown dramatically in recent decades, yet scholars have paid little if any attention to the preachers or the preaching within Hispanic Protestant congregations. The thesis of this project is that the unique transnational experiences, immigration stories, bicultural identities, and contextual hardships of Hispanic preachers actually shape their calling, praxis, and proclamation in significant ways. The primary methodology employed within this dissertation is collaborative ethnography as described by Luke Eric Lassiter in The Chicago Guide to Collaborative Ethnography. This study involved a multiyear period of participant-observation as well as several rounds of interviews and focus group sessions with twenty-four individual subjects engaged in preaching ministries within Hispanic Protestant congregations.

This dissertation highlights the ways in which the sermons of Hispanic Protestant preachers who are recent immigrants echo the particular concerns of immigrant communities while also focusing strongly on the importance of spiritual conversion. It also demonstrates the role of testimony and the power of the preaching platform for female preachers within this demographic. My collaborators revealed, through their stories and proclamation, the incredible homiletical importance of the preacher’s ability to understand and to speak from within the culture of his or her congregation. This bears significant implications for the way in which future ministers engage in both vocational discernment and theological education. It also highlights the encouraging possibilities of ethnography for pastoral practice. Furthermore, the practice of the collaborators featured in this dissertation reveals the sustaining power of preaching within marginalized communities. Finally, the aims of the predicadores involved in this work reveal their hopes for the future of their congregations, which do not easily fit within the typical categories assigned to them in sociological analyses.