Perceived ethnic discrimination, ethnic-racial socialization, and substance use among ethnic minority adolescents

Abstract

Perceived discrimination is a significant problem among ethnic minority adolescents and has been consistently linked to negative outcomes, including substance use, although few studies examine this relation with more than one time point. The present study adds to the literature by examining whether ethnic-racial socialization moderates the effects of perceived discrimination at time 1 on recent substance use six months later in a sample of ethnic minority, public high school students in Southern California. The results from analyses of survey data showed that perceived discrimination did not predict the likelihood of the outcomes, and they suggest that discrimination based on attributes other than ethnicity, such as immigration or documentation status, may be operating in the sample. Future research should simultaneously analyze effects of discrimination by type of attribute as well as level (e.g., intragroup, intergroup, and structural).With regard to ethnic-racial socialization in the multivariate models, cultural socialization was negatively related to the likelihood of the outcomes. Preparation for bias was positively related to the likelihood of the outcomes. Promotion of mistrust was not statistically significantly related to the likelihood of the outcomes. Although the socialization variables did not moderate the effect of perceived discrimination, they were clearly related to substance use in multiple ways, suggesting that future research continue to distinguish the effects of socialization by type to better understand how they can be addressed to optimize youth outcomes.

Ethnic-Racial Socialization among Latinx Families: A Systematic Review of the Literature

“…It shows that ERS can buffer the effect of discrimination (Carranza 2007;Ayón 2016). It also shows that ERS is related to ethnic identity development (Quintana and Vera 1999;Hughes et al 2009;Rivas-Drake et al 2009;Knight et al 2011Knight et al , 2017Umaña-Taylor 2015, 2016;Else-Quest and Morse 2015;White et al 2018;Christophe et al 2019;Wang et al 2019), academic adjustment (Huynh and Fuligni 2008;Berkel et al 2010;Calzada et al 2012;McGill et al 2012;Umaña-Taylor et al 2014;Caughy and Owen 2015;Rivas-Drake and Marchand 2016;Kim et al 2018;McDermott et al 2018), mental health (Phinney and Chavira 1995;Derlan et al 2015;Espinoza et al 2016;Padilla et al 2016;Santiago et al 2016;Wang and Benner 2016;Gonzales-Backen et al 2017;Chen et al 2019;Park et al 2019), and behavioral health (Grindal and Nieri 2016;Nieri et al 2019;Zapolski and Clifton 2019).…”

“…This is the only measure that addresses immigration socialization as an integral part of the ERS process. Three studies used an ERS measure that was adapted from other measures (Grindal andNieri 2015, 2016;Nieri et al 2019) and validated through confirmatory factor analysis (Grindal and Nieri 2015). Other studies created measures specifically for their projects, including a single-item measure (Barbarin and Jean-Baptiste 2013), a 2-item measure (Pieloch, Marks, and Garcia Coll 2018), and other measures with between 5 and 21 items (Quintana, Castañeda-English, and Ybarra 1999;Quintana and Vera 1999;Chen, Benner, and Wang 2019).…”

Examining the influence of ethnic–racial socialization and parental warmth on Latinx youth psychosocial outcomes.

“…Yet, cultural socialization was not associated with either internalizing or externalizing symptoms, suggesting that the protective effects do not extend to other aspects of mental health. However, evidence from meta-analyses and other samples of Latinx youth indicates a negative relation between cultural socialization and externalizing behaviors (e.g., Espinoza et al, 2016; Grindal & Nieri, 2015; Nieri et al, 2022; Wang, Henry, et al, 2020; Zapolski et al, 2019). One reason for this discrepancy may be that most of these studies focused on substance use, which is only one facet of our externalizing behaviors measure, so much more work in this area is needed to fully understand what aspects of behavioral symptoms cultural socialization is protective for.…”

Hasta la Raiz: Cultivating racial‐ethnic socialization in Latine families

“…These contexts include the microsystem , such as family, neighborhoods, and peers, and their interrelation ( mesosystem ). For example, in one study, youth's experiences of discrimination prompted more parent‐youth RES conversations (Nieri et al., 2022 MR ). In other research, schools, peers, and neighborhoods strengthened the impact of parents' RES efforts on youth's outcomes, especially when these entities were perceived to be safer and to reflect families' ethnic‐racial backgrounds (Umaña‐Taylor et al., 2014 M ; Witherspoon et al., 2022 MR ).…”