Background
In clinical research, there has been a call to move beyond individual psychosocial factors towards identifying cultural and social factors that inform mental health. Similar calls have been made in the eating disorders (ED) field underscoring the need to understand larger sociocultural influences on EDs. Discrimination is a social stressor that may influence mental health in similar ways to traumatic or adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Given the high rates of EDs and discrimination among marginalized groups, it is vital to understand the role of discrimination and ACEs as predictors of ED symptoms in these populations. The aim of this study is to examine how perceived discrimination predicts ED pathology when statistically adjusting for gender, race, and ACEs.
Methods
The diverse study sample consisted of 331 undergraduate students from a longitudinal cohort study (ages 18–24; 66% female; 35% White/non-Hispanic). Participants completed measures of everyday discrimination, ACEs, and ED pathology.
Results
Following adjustment for multiple statistical comparisons, the frequency of daily discrimination predicted all ED symptoms above and beyond history of ACEs. In follow-up analyses, number of reasons for discrimination predicted cognitive restraint and purging. Differences in ED symptomatology were found based on the reason for discrimination, gender, and race. Specifically, those who experienced weight discrimination endorsed higher scores on all ED symptoms, and those experiencing gender discrimination endorsed higher body dissatisfaction, cognitive restraint, and restriction. People of color endorsed higher restriction, while female participants endorsed higher scores on all ED symptom with the exception of cognitive restraint.
Conclusion
Discrimination is a salient risk factor for ED symptoms even when accounting for individuals’ history of ACEs. Future research should utilize an intersectional approach to examine how perceived discrimination affects ED pathology over time. (Word count: 234).
Students with disabilities, specifically students with behaviors that interfere with their learning or the learning with others, often miss out on classroom instruction. Schools have developed functional behavioral assessments and behavioral intervention plans (BIPs) for individual students in order to create a desired behavior change. Studies have found that these behavioral intervention plans are often not implemented with fidelity and result in poor outcomes for these students. The purpose of this study was to examine how well BIPs are being implemented with fidelity when a collaborative approach is implemented and how, when followed with fidelity, students are positively impacted I worked with paraprofessionals in the classroom in a collaborative way in order to increase BIP fidelity. This study specifically looked at adult knowledge of student BIPs, adult BIP fidelity data, student behavioral achievement data, and time spent out of the classroom due to problem behaviors. Results indicated that when adult BIP implementation fidelity increased, there were positive outcomes for students. Limitations and future research are provided.
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