OPUS Spring 2017
Letter from the Editor
Staff Articles
- Managing Mental Health in the Primary Care Sector
- An Interview with Dr. Joshua Aronson
- An Interview with Dr. Elise Cappella
- Childhood Emotional Abuse and Borderline Personality Disorder
- Split: A Review and Its Unexpected Merit
- The Influence of Leadership Style on Individuals’ Satisfaction on Small Teams
- The Impact of Postpartum Depression on the Mother-Child Relationship
- Don’t Worry, But Don’t Just Be Happy
- Teachers’ Use of Positive and Negative Feedback: Implications for Student Behavior
The Influence of Cultural Socialization on Latino-American Early Adolescents’ Educational Utility
Faculty Mentor | Dr. Erin Godfrey
Educational utility, positive views about the value of education, is linked to academic success (Bravo et al., 2014). For Latino youth, research shows that educational utility is positively related to cultural socialization (messages ethnic minority parents teach about their culture) in mid to late adolescence (Rivas-Drake & Marchand, 2016). As Latino-Americans face obstacles in school (Contreras, 2005), studying this relationship during early adolescence is important. However, little is known about this relationship during this key developmental time for sending messages about the value of education and culture (Galván et al., 2011). Thus, this paper used hierarchical ordinary least squares regression to consider how cultural socialization relates to educational utility in Latino- American early adolescents while controlling for other factors shown to predict educational utility (Heard, 2007). Additionally, to understand if cultural socialization becomes more protective with time, this paper uses moderation analyses to test for grade-level differences in the association between educational utility and cultural socialization. Results indicate that cultural socialization is significantly related to educational utility (b = .12(05); p < .05; β = .15), suggesting that this variable can facilitate Latino-American success in school in early, middle and late adolescence. Further, the association between cultural socialization and educational utility was moderated by grade-level. Cultural socialization predicted educational utility in sixth and eighth grade, but not seventh grade. These findings imply that cultural socialization is most protective during school transition years (i.e., sixth and eighth grade). Thus, these may be the optimal time to send positive messages about ethnicity.