Music is a fundamental cultural product with which adolescents are finely attuned within and across sociocultural contexts. However, very little is known about the intricate interplay among music, psychology, and culture in adolescence. The purpose of this literature review is twofold: (1) to define, ground, and situate a new perspective towards a cultural developmental psychology of music in adolescence; and (2) to find and organize the extant literature pertaining to the cultural and developmental roles of music in adolescence. The rationale is organized in two sections. The first section defines the meaning of a cultural-developmental psychology of music in adolescence. It also explains how this perspective can be grounded in principles of cultural psychology, notably the mutual constitution between culture and the person. It then situates this perspective within established cultural research on music (evolutionary psychology, music perception, and ethnomusicology). The second section presents a critical outlook on the slowly growing but fragmented literature pertaining to culture, psychology, and music in adolescence (music preferences; music motivation and functions; dance; language; social network and multitasking; ethnicity and cultural diversity; and cultural competence in music-based interventions). In conclusion, theoretical and methodological directions are suggested for future cultural research on music in adolescence.

Racism has been linked to the development or worsening of mental health disorders. When posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms occur due to experiences of racism, it may be referred to as race-based traumatic stress or racial trauma. More work is needed to quantify the distress experienced by those affected. The present study aimed to assess the validity of the Racial Trauma Scale (RTS), a new clinical tool for the measurement of trauma-related symptoms arising from race-based maltreatment of people of color (POC). Using CloudResearch (formerly Amazon Mechanical TurkPrime), 941 diverse participants across the United States were included in the study-POC (n = 665) and non-Hispanic White participants (n = 276). The results validated a three-factor structure, with 10 items on each component, for a total of 30 items. The three components can be described as Lack of Safety, Negative Cognitions, and Difficulty Coping. Reliability of the RTS and the three subscales were excellent, and the RTS scale was positively correlated with other measures of mental health and trauma. Furthermore, there was a significant difference in RTS scores between POC and non-Hispanic White participants. Based on these findings, the RTS appears to be a valid means of quantifying racial trauma symptoms in POC. The ultimate goal of the RTS is to identify racial trauma to improve the mental health of marginalized racial/ethnic groups. The RTS can be used in clinical or research settings to ascertain racial trauma in clients and inform treatment.

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Andersen et al. (2021) published an article in this journal entitled "Racial Bias and Lethal Force Errors Among Canadian Police Officers," exploring the possible relationship between lethal force errors on a simulated police recertification shooting test, stress physiology, and suspect race (Black vs. White). Finding no association between Black-White Implicit Association Test (BW-IAT) scores and shooting errors in the test, they erroneously concluded that the BW-IAT lacks validity as a screening tool to assess racially biased use of force and thereby is not useful. This article reviews the methodological problems, biased assumptions, and errors in logic made by the authors, and discusses an informed approach to understanding racial bias and police violence. It also makes a call-to-action for antiracism approaches in academic publishing. Public Significance StatementThe Implicit Associations Test (IAT) has been used to identify implicit racial bias, and there have been some calls to use this tool as part of law enforcement screening and training to help reduce police violence against people of color. This article explicates conceptual and methodological flaws in a recent study that erroneously concluded the Black-White IAT was not an adequate predictor of police officer bias.

There is growing evidence that the risk and burden of COVID-19 infections are not equally distributed across population subgroups and that racialized communities are experiencing disproportionately higher morbidity and mortality rates. However, due to the absence of large-scale race-based data, it is impossible to measure the extent to which immigrant and racialized communities are experiencing the pandemic and the impact of measures taken (or not) to mitigate these impacts, especially at a local level. To address this issue, the Ottawa Local Immigration Partnership partnered with the Collaborative Critical Research for Equity and Transformation in Health lab at the University of Ottawa and the Canadians of African Descent Health Organization to implement a project to build local organizational capacities to understand, monitor, and mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on immigrant and racialized populations. This research note describes the working framework used for this project, proposed indicators for measuring the determinants of health among immigrant and racialized populations, and the data gaps we encountered. Recommendations are made to policymakers, and community and health stakeholders at all levels on how to collect and use data to address COVID-19 health inequities, including data collection strategies aimed at community engagement in the collection of disaggregated data, improving methods for collecting and analyzing data on immigrants and racialized groups and policies to enable and enhance data disaggregation.RésuméDes plus en plus d’études montrent que le risque et le fardeau des infections à la COVID-19 ne sont pas également répartis dans la population et que les communautés racialisées connaissent des taux de morbidité et de mortalité disproportionnellement plus élevés. Cependant, en raison de l’absence de données ventilés selon le statut ethnique, il est impossible de mesurer comment les communautés immigrantes et racialisées vivent la pandémie et quel est l’impact des mesures prises (ou non) pour atténuer ces effets, surtout à un niveau local. Pour résoudre ce problème, le Partenariat local pour l’immigration d’Ottawa (PLIO) s’est associé au Laboratoire de recherche critique collaborative pour l’équité et la transformation en santé (CO-CREATH) de l’Université d’Ottawa et l’Organisation de la santé des Canadiens d’ascendance africaine (CADHO) aux fins de mettre en œuvre un projet visant à renforcer les capacités organisationnelles locales pour comprendre, surveiller et atténuer l’impact de la pandémie de la COVID-19 sur les populations immigrantes et racialisées. Cette note de recherche décrit le cadre de travail utilisé pour ce projet, les indicateurs proposés pour mesurer les déterminants de la santé chez les populations immigrantes et racialisées, et les lacunes que nous avons identifiés dans les données existants. Des recommandations sont faites aux décideurs politiques et aux acteurs communautaires et de la santé à tous les niveaux sur comment collecter et utiliser les données pour remédier aux inégalités en matière de santé liées à la COVID-19. Ces recommandations font référence aux stratégies de collecte de données visant à impliquer les communautés, à l’amélioration des méthodes de collecte et d’analyse des données sur les immigrants et les groupes racialisés, et aux politiques nécessaires pour permettre et améliorer la désagrégation des données selon le statut ethnique.

Substantial research effort over the past few decades has aimed to explain how young people understand, feel, and participate in politics. However, this growing literature remains fragmented across several research disciplines, including psychology. This article proposes youth political engagement (YPE) as a concept that can be used to capture the varying forms of political expressions under a unifying theme in adolescence. The objectives of this review are to define YPE, to outline the conceptual structure of YPE, to consider how YPE may develop from diverse antecedents, and to offer directions for future research. Overall, YPE offers a unifying theme of research to better understand the political sphere of adolescent development.

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