Abstract
Latinx youth living in the United States reside in a myriad of cultural and neighborhood contexts, yet little is known regarding how cultural values influence behavior problems across neighborhood contexts. Using a person–environment fit framework, the present study explored the degree to which youth cultural values were associated with their externalizing problems, and the degree to which this association was shaped by their neighborhood’s socioeconomic status (SES), and Latinx and immigrant concentration. The sample comprised of 998 Latinx youth (Female = 54.2%), ages 10 to 14 years old (Mage = 11.8), from three large United States metropolitan areas. Multilevel modeling methods indicated that increased fit between youth cultural values and neighborhood Latinx and immigrant concentration was associated with fewer externalizing problems, but only in higher SES neighborhoods. The results support the importance of studying social determinants of Latinx youth behavioral health, and provide implications for both neighborhood-level and individual-level prevention and intervention programming.
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Notes
The term “Latinx,” is used in order to be gender inclusive. See Santos (2017) for a discussion on the use of this term.
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Acknowledgements
The authors are most grateful to all the students, school personnel, and parents who made this study happen. We are also additionally grateful to all the research assistants and graduate students at DePaul University, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Judge Baker Children’s Center, who helped in many phases of the work presented here.
Author Contributions
W.M. conceived of the study, spearheaded its design and coordination, participated in the data collection at the Chicago site, prepared, and managed the data, as well as performed and interpreted statistical analyses, and had primary responsibility for writing the full manuscript; A.P. conceived of the study, participated in the measures’ selection, study design, and data collection and coordination across sites, interpreted statistical analyses, and contributed to writing the manuscript. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Funding
This research was supported, in part, through a National Research Council of the National Academies Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship awarded to the first author. In addition, the first author received support through a Dissertation Support Award awarded by the American Psychological Association’s Minority Fellowship Program, sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and a Children’s Psychological Issues Dissertation Microgrant sponsored through the Illinois Psychological Association for Graduate Students. The first author would also like to acknowledge the support received as a scholar with the University of California, Los Angeles HIV/AIDS, Substance Abuse, and Trauma Training Program (R25 DA035692). Finally, the second author would like to acknowledge the support of a National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Underrepresented Minority Research Supplement grant (R21 MH063302).
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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The present study was approved by the Institutional Review Boards of both DePaul University and the Judge Baker Children’s Center.
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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study, including parental consent and youth assent.
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Martinez, W., Polo, A.J. Neighborhood Context, Family Cultural Values, and Latinx Youth Externalizing Problems. J Youth Adolescence 47, 2440–2452 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-018-0914-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-018-0914-6