Abstract
Developed and validated instruments for urban and culturally diverse adolescents to assess their self-reported transactions with family, peer, school, and neighborhood microsystems for the constructs of social support, daily hassles, and involvement. The sample of 998 youth were from schools in three Eastern cities with high percentages of economically disadvantaged youth. Data were collected before and after the transition to junior high school or to senior high school. Blacks constituted 26%, whites 26%, and Latinos 37% of the sample. Factor analyses confirmed and enhanced the hypothesized four-factor microsystem factor structure for support, hassles, and involvement; internal consistency and stability coefficients were consistent with these structures. In general, the microsystem factors were common across gender, ethnicity, and age. However, when group differences did occur on these demographic variables, they tended to validate the salience of microsystem specificity. In contrast to the total scores, the microsystem-specific factors yielded more meaningful and differential information with regard to demographic differences and the mediating processes across a school transition.
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This research was supported in part by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health (MH43084) and the Carnegie Corporation (B4850) awarded to Edward Seidman, J. Lawrence Aber, LaRue Allen, and Christina Mitchell. We express our appreciation to the children and schools whose cooperation made this study possible, as well as to Tracey A. Revenson for her creative suggestions on restructuring an earlier draft of this manuscript.
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Seidman, E., Allen, L., Lawrence Aber, J. et al. Development and validation of adolescent-perceived microsystem scales: Social support, daily hassles, and involvement. Am J Commun Psychol 23, 355–388 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02506949
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02506949