A mixed methods comparison of adolescents' and researchers' observations of neighborhood characteristics in Latinx neighborhoods.

We used a convergent mixed methods research design to compare and contrast researchers' neighborhood environmental assessments collected using systematic social observations with adolescents' neighborhood environmental assessments collected by semi-structured interviews with US Mexican adolescents. Using qualitative methods, we found that adolescents sometimes observed the same neighborhood environmental features as researchers. They also sometimes observed different environmental features altogether; in both cases they sometimes layered on additional meaning making. Using mixed methods, we found that there was a high degree of overlap between researchers and adolescents in terms of agreement on the presence of neighborhood environmental features, including physical disorder, physical decay, street safety, and sociocultural symbols. Adolescents expanded upon these neighborhood environmental features with references to positive and negative affect and neighborhood environmental resources. This work highlights the shared and unique aspects of researcher versus adolescent observations and how both data sources are critical to understanding Latinx neighborhood environments.

A Retrospective Analysis of Racial Discrimination Experiences for Latinx Adolescents and Young Adults.

Encounters with racial discrimination occur from various sources and contexts for Latinx youth. From a historical context, Latinx have long experienced anti-immigrant sentiment and have been treated as perpetual foreigners. This study centers the voices of U.S.-born Latinx youth and explores their experiences of discrimination in 83 in-depth interviews (15-25 years, x~age = 21.27, SD = 2.10; 58% Female). Through retrospective accounts, we identified four themes across narratives: assumed (illegal) immigrant, assumed unintelligent, assumed criminal, assumed inferior. Overt and subtle discrimination occurred across contexts and from multiple sources including peers, store employees, and strangers. The findings have implications for understanding Latinx youth make meaning of past experiences of discrimination and how those experiences are interpreted later in life.

Adolescent Development in Context: A Decade Review of Neighborhood and Activity Space Research.

Over the last decade, two lines of inquiry have emerged from earlier investigations of adolescent neighborhood effects. First, researchers began incorporating space-time geography to study adolescent development within activity spaces or routine activity locations and settings. Second, cultural-developmental researchers implicated neighborhood settings in cultural development, to capture neighborhood effects on competencies and processes that are salient or normative for minoritized youth. We review the decade's studies on adolescent externalizing, internalizing, academic achievement, health, and cultural development within neighborhoods and activity spaces. We offer recommendations supporting decompartmentalization of cultural-developmental and activity space scholarship to advance the science of adolescent development in context.

A systematic review and meta-analysis of the association of neighborhood ethnic-racial concentrations and adolescent behaviour problems in the U.S.

INTRODUCTION: Evidence suggesting a link between neighborhood ethnic-racial concentrations and adolescent behaviour problems in the U.S. is mixed, with some studies documenting negative and others positive associations. This work raises important questions about promoting and inhibiting effects of neighborhood environments characterized by high concentrations of ethnic-racial minority groups, including Asian Americans, Blacks or African Americans, and Latinos. We conducted a meta-analysis to examine 1) the magnitude, direction, and variability of the association between neighborhood ethnic-racial concentrations and adolescent behaviour problems, and 2) whether these associations varied by putative moderators. METHODS: We conducted a systematic search in PsycINFO, Web of Science, and PubMed as well as searching reference lists and relying on expert knowledge (285 initial records). We coded the records for theoretical and design elements. RESULTS: We included 40 effect sizes from 17 records (24% unpublished) with N = 11,858. The average association between neighborhood ethnic-racial concentrations and adolescent behaviour problems was not significantly different from zero (r = -0.001, 95% CI -0.048, 0.046, p = .964, τ2= 0.006); there was a large percentage of systematic heterogeneity (I2 = 77.1%), which was not explained by putative moderators. CONCLUSIONS: There is substantial unexplained systematic heterogeneity in the association between neighborhood ethnic-racial concentrations and adolescents' behaviour problems. There is heavy reliance on a small number of parent datasets in research on this topic, alongside critical reporting omissions. We offer recommendations to guide future work, in hopes of supporting culturally and developmentally informed policies and programs capable of addressing residential segregation.

U.S. Mexican-origin adolescents' bicultural competence and mental health in context.

OBJECTIVES: We examined the prospective association (from Mage = 15.84 to 17.38 years) between bicultural competence and mental health among U.S. Mexican-origin adolescents relative to multiple (a) developmental niches, (b) components of bicultural competence, and (c) indicators of mental health. METHOD: Participants included 749 adolescents (49% female, 29.7% Mexico-born) recruited during late childhood and followed through late adolescence. We used latent profile analyses to identify adolescents' developmental niches based on sociocultural characteristics of the family, school, and neighborhood contexts and multiple-group structural equation modeling to examine whether these niches moderated the association between bicultural competence and mental health. RESULTS: We identified 5 distinct adolescents' developmental niches. We found no association between bicultural competence and internalizing symptoms across niches; bicultural facility predicted lower externalizing symptoms among adolescents developing in niches characterized by immigrant families and predominantly Latino schools and neighborhoods. CONCLUSIONS: The diversity found among U.S. Mexican-origin adolescents' niches underscores the need to assess context broadly by including a range of settings. Studying multiple components of bicultural competence across numerous cultural domains may provide a better understanding of any mental health benefits of biculturalism. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

The associations among racial discrimination, pubertal timing, neighborhoods, and mental health among U.S. Mexican boys.

The present study addressed gaps in puberty and weathering research by examining the relation between peer racial discrimination, pubertal timing, internalizing and externalizing symptoms, and neighborhood context among a longitudinal sample of U.S. Mexican boys. Using three waves of data (N = 383; mean ages: 10.3-15.8 years), we examined the weathering hypothesis: Whether peer racial discrimination experiences in late childhood predicted earlier pubertal timing in adolescence and subsequent mental health problems. We also examined whether variability in youths' neighborhood contexts qualified these associations. Consistent with the weathering hypothesis, exposure to peer racial discrimination in 5th grade, predicated earlier pubertal timing in the 7th grade, which, in turn, predicted increases in internalizing symptoms in the 10th grade. However, this pattern only applied to boys residing in neighborhoods with higher levels of Latinx concentration in 5th grade. Additionally, early timing in the 7th grade predicted increases in externalizing symptoms, but this association was significant only when boys lived in neighborhoods that were lower on Latinx concentration. There was evidence of weathering in context with specific implications for internalizing symptoms, and that neighborhood Latinx concentration was both inhibiting and promoting at unique places in the hypothesized model. The findings advance existing understandings of weathering patterns and individual variation in pubertal timing among U.S. Mexican boys. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

A prospective examination of neighborhood social and cultural cohesion and parenting processes on ethnic-racial identity among U.S. Mexican adolescents.

Neighborhood social processes may have important implications for parenting processes and ethnic-racial identity (ERI) processes and content in adolescence. Past research suggests that adolescents whose parents engaged in more cultural socialization, an important aspect of parental racial socialization, had higher levels of ERI processes and content. Parenting, however, is also situated within neighborhood contexts and can be influenced by resources available in neighborhoods. For example, having neighbors who share mutual values, trust one another, and appreciate/celebrate one's heritage culture may be a resource that promotes parents' efforts to engage in cultural socialization. We prospectively examined (from x¯age = 10.9-15.8 years) a model in which U.S. Mexican parents' perceptions of neighborhood social and cultural cohesion supported parents' engagement in higher levels of cultural socialization and in turn promoted adolescents' ethnic-racial identity processes and content. We tested a longitudinal mediation model with a sample of 749 U.S. Mexican adolescents (30% Mexico born; 48.9% female) and their parents. Mother-adolescent models suggest mothers' perception of neighborhood social and cultural cohesion in late childhood promoted middle adolescents' ERI affirmation via intermediate increases in maternal cultural socialization. Similar patterns were observed for ERI resolution, but only for adolescents whose mothers were born in the United States. We did not find evidence for mediation in the father-adolescent models. Findings are discussed in the context of the promoting nature of socially and culturally supportive neighborhood environments for U.S. Mexican families and adolescents. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

U.S. Mexican parents' use of harsh parenting in the context of neighborhood danger.

Family stress model research suggests that parents' exposure to environmental stressors can disrupt key parenting processes. As family stress model scholarship has expanded to include increasingly diverse populations and a wider range of contexts, studies have documented important nuances. One of these nuances concerns U.S. Mexican parents' use of harsh parenting. In the current study, we examined the harshness-as-disruption family stress-model hypothesis, which specifies parental emotional distress as a mediator of positive associations between neighborhood danger and parental harshness. We contrasted this perspective with cultural-developmental perspectives suggesting that harsh parenting may be an important parenting adaptation to dangerous neighborhood environments (harshness-as-adaptation). We tested the harshness-as-disruption hypothesis prospectively, in a sample of U.S. Mexican mothers (N = 749) and fathers (n = 579) with children in the late childhood to early adolescent age-range. Both mothers and fathers demonstrated higher levels of depression symptoms in the face of neighborhood danger. Fathers' harsh parenting, however, was unrelated to neighborhood danger or depressive symptoms. All mothers demonstrated some evidence of the harshness-as-disruption family stress process. For highly familistic mothers, however, harsh parenting may reflect a combination of harshness-as-disruption and harshness-as-adaptation processes. This combined interpretation is consistent with cultural-developmental models highlighting structural inequalities that filter families of color into lower-resourced, more stressful environments, but simultaneously recognizing that families' and communities' adapting cultural systems support parenting responses to such circumstances. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).