Averting Another Lost Decade

Abstract

This study endorses an urgent call-to-action for researchers to move Hispanic families from outlier to mainstream family research. The top-15 ranked U.S. journals in the field of family studies published more than 8,000 articles in the prior decade—the same time period when Hispanics were also the largest, most rapidly growing ethnic group in the United States. This study contributes to the field of family studies by using quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze these articles per journal for empirical evidence that indicates the importance of Hispanic families within this literature. Further empirical evidence comes from extending the analysis to 2011. The evidence presented suggests insufficiency of Hispanic family research with regard to quantity, quality, relevance, and recognized contributions to the field of family studies. The discourse includes examples and recommendations for averting another lost decade of opportunities for research relevant to the health and welfare of a growing U.S. Hispanic population.

Keywords

disparity family research Hispanic Latina Latino Mexican American

The social conditions of poverty, inadequate housing, poor access to health care, and a high rate of single-parent households are experiences shared today by U.S. Hispanics (Bernal & Sáez-Santiago, 2006). The result of these social conditions is that mental health and health services are especially needed for U.S. Hispanics because they are largely uninsured and underserved (Ojeda & McGuire, 2006; Willerton, Dankoski, & Martir, 2008). McGoldrick and Hardy (2008) state that the interventions delivered through these services, however, largely ignore the diverse cultural dimension of families within U.S. society, and therefore, families from many cultural groups avoid therapy or never find the interventions helpful.

The long-term expected outlook is for the Hispanic population to change U.S. demographics in ways that will only increase demand for social services and interventions. Hispanics were the largest, most rapidly growing ethnic group in the United States in the prior decade. According to the American Community Survey (ACS; U.S. Census Bureau, 2009), of the U.S. population estimated at 307 million in 2009, 15.8% or 48.4 million were Hispanic, up from 35.3 million in the 2000 U.S. Census. Within these census time periods, 51.0% of the nation’s population growth came from the Hispanics, which had a growth rate of 37.0%—four times the 9.1% growth rate for the overall population. This rapid growth was the result of new births, indicating a relatively young Hispanic population, and from immigration (Domenech-Rodríguez, McNeal, & Cauce, 2008). The U.S. Census Bureau (2008) has projected that Hispanics will represent 19.4% (n = 66.4 million) of the U.S. population estimated at 341.4 million in 2020 and 30.3% (n = 132.8 million) of the U.S. population estimated at 439.0 million in 2050.

Researchers over the prior decades have advanced the importance of providing individuals, families, and children with treatment, prevention, and mental health service delivery within the context of their cultural and social processes (Bernal, Trimble, Burlew, & Leong, 2003; Marín & Marín, 1991; Rogler, 1989; Sue & Zane, 1987). Concurrently, other researchers have emphasized the need to consider cultural and contextual aspects in psychosocial interventions (Bernal, Bonilla, & Bellido, 1995; Bernal & Scharrón-del-Rio, 2001; Nagayama-Hall, 2001; Rogler, Malgady, Costantino, & Blumenthal, 1987). The American Psychological Association’s (2003) multicultural guidelines on education, research, training, practice, and organizational change further acknowledged the importance of multiculturalism within the fields of psychology. Within family therapy, researchers have also long advocated for a more inclusive view of culture (Boyd-Franklin, 2003; Falicov, 1998; McGoldrick, Giordano, & Garcia-Preto, 2005; Pinsof & Lebow, 2005; Szapocznik & Kurtines, 1993).

Culture plays an important role in mental health treatment for a number of reasons. The National Institute of Mental Health’s (1999) report titled Strategic Plan for Reducing Health Disparities cites that one’s cultural beliefs about the nature of mental illness influence one’s view of the course and treatment of any condition and that there are differences in how individuals from different cultural backgrounds experience and manifest symptoms of mental illness. Moreover, the report indicates that diagnoses of mental disorders vary across cultures. In a supplement report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2001), the U.S. Surgeon General concludes that culture moderates various aspects of mental illness—including manifestation of symptoms, coping styles, family and community support, and willingness to seek treatment—as well as diagnosis, treatment, and service delivery.

Since people learn and display all behavior within a cultural context, to be effective, an intervention must consider the cultural context of the patient (Pedersen, 2003). Prior studies have shown differences in how people of diverse cultures respond to interventions with regard to service utilization (Arroyo, Westerberg, & Tonigan, 1998; Flaskerud & Liu, 1991; McMiller & Weisz, 1996), treatment preferences (Aldous, 1994; Constantino, Malgady, & Rogler, 1994; Penn, Kar, Kramer, Skinner, & Zambrana, 1995), and health beliefs (McMiller & Weisz, 1996; Penn et al., 1995). A more recent study using meta-analysis suggests that culturally adapted interventions have a greater effect than nonadapted, traditional interventions; more cultural adaptations lead to better intervention outcomes; and most successful implementations occur with interventions adapted to the context of a single cultural group (Smith, Domenech-Rodríguez, & Bernal, 2011).

These findings underscore the critical importance of intervention research to the advancement of evidence-based psychological practice (Bernal & Domenech-Rodríquez, 2009). Measures of this importance reflect not only in the volume of studies published in peer-review journals but also in the sufficiency of the studies with regard to quality, relevance, and recognized contributions to the literature. The top-15 ranked U.S. journals in the field of family studies published more than 8,000 articles in the prior decade—the same time period when Hispanics were also the largest, most rapidly growing ethnic group in the United States. This study contributes to the field of family studies by using quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze these articles per journal for empirical evidence that indicates the importance of Hispanic families within this literature. Further empirical evidence comes from extending the analysis to 2011. The proposed research is timely in that no prior study has sufficiently provided scholars and funding organizations with empirical evidence to identify the research gaps and lines of investigation needed to ensure policy makers, mental health and health providers, and other stakeholders use the best information to guide social policy and practice impacting directly Hispanic families.

The precedent for this study came from initial work of Bernal and Domenech-Rodríquez (2009), which offered a cursory examination of the psychology literature with regard to studies inclusive of Hispanic families and children. The following section includes highlights from their work as a prelude to my proposed research. I then outline the methodology and procedures for the study, followed by a presentation of the results and a discussion of the findings. The discourse also includes examples to illustrate how researchers could expand Hispanic family research in select topic areas—relevant to today’s Hispanic families—but less represented in the Hispanic family research literature. I conclude with a synthesis of the findings and recommendations that endorse an urgent call-to-action for researchers to move Hispanic families from outlier to mainstream family research and thereby avert another lost decade of opportunities for research relevant to the health and welfare of a growing U.S. Hispanic population.

The Precedent for the Proposed Study

As part of their article introducing the 2009 special issue of Family Process on advances in Latino family research, Bernal and Domenech-Rodríguez (2009) examined the entire body of citations cataloged in PsycINFO from 1960 to 2008 for articles on children or families in any field—and for Hispanics and children or families. Maintained by the American Psychological Association, the PsycINFO database contains more than 3 million records of peer-reviewed literature in behavioral science and mental health (EBSCO, 2012b). They found that the number of articles on children or families grew from 18,562 articles in the 1960 to 1969 decade to 157,932 in the time period 2000 to 2008, a growth of 750%. They also found a significant increase in references on Hispanic children or families from 7 references on Hispanics and children or families between 1960 and 1969 to 1,256 references in the time period 2000 to 2008. These Hispanic references, however, only represented 0.04% and 0.80% of the total references on families and children in the 1960 to 1969 decade and the time period 2000 to 2008, respectively.

To frame the findings within the context of the special issue, the authors narrowed the search to the total number of articles published in the Family Process journal during the past five decades and organized them into the following categories: all articles, culture or ethnicity, and Hispanics. Of the 325 articles published in the time period 2000 to 2008, they identified only 11 articles for the Hispanic category. Of the 891 articles published prior to 2000, the researchers found no articles for the Hispanic category. Bernal and Domenech-Rodríguez (2009) also explored the Family Process journal publications for any on culture or ethnicity. They found 1 article published in the 1960 to 1969 decade, 2 in the 1970 to 1979 decade, 4 in the 1980 to 1989 decade, 21 in the 1990 to 1999 decade, and 26 in the time period 2000 to 2008, of which 11 were on Hispanics, as noted earlier. Of the total 1,216 articles published in Family Process over the five decades, the authors found that only 0.9% related to Hispanics and 4.4% to culture or ethnicity.

In summary, Bernal and Domenech-Rodríguez (2009) found that more than 99% of the psychological literature during the past five decades did not reference Hispanics. Similarly, 99% of the articles published between 1960 and 2008 in the Family Process journal were void of any reference to Hispanics, whereas less than 5% referenced anything to do with culture or ethnicity. These findings suggest disparity between the available research within the context of the Hispanic population and its importance as the fastest growing ethnic group in the United States. More so, against this vast backdrop of publications, Hispanic families appear as outliers in mainstream research.

Hispanic Family Research in Other Prominent Journals

Because their article was an introduction to the Family Process special issue, the authors’ analysis was limited to a simple count of total articles and Hispanic-related articles based on their search terms. Still, the Bernal and Domenech-Rodríguez (2009) article was noteworthy in calling attention to the dearth of family research within the context of the Hispanic population. I was most intrigued, however, by the authors’ findings from their keyword analysis of the prominent journal, Family Process. In this study, I expand this specific aspect of their research to other prominent journals in the field of family studies, which provides a summative evaluation of Hispanic family research published in sync with the same time period when Hispanics were the largest, most rapidly growing ethnic group in the United States (American Community Survey; U.S. Census Bureau, 2009). I then extend the analysis to 2011, which provides a formative evaluation of Hispanic family research published at the start of the new decade (2011-2020) compared with the prior decade.

The prominent journals analyzed in the proposed research are the top-15 ranked U.S. journals in the field of family studies, based on their 5-year impact factor, 2006 to 2010, as reported in the 2010 Journal Citation Reports: Social Sciences Edition (Thomson Reuters, 2011). Expanding the research to these prominent journals is important. Bernal and Domenech-Rodríguez (2009) based their findings solely on the quantity of Hispanic family research citations in articles found in the psychology literature but without regard to quality, relevance, or recognized contributions from these articles to the field of family studies. Scholars recognize these latter attributes as hallmarks of the top-15 ranked U.S. journals selected for this study, and therefore, the findings from this research are likewise within the context of these attributes.

Method

In replicating the Bernal and Domenech-Rodríguez (2009) research design, I made a number of refinements to their methodology. The authors used the terms Latino, Hispanic, and Spanish as keywords in the search process (Bernal & Domenech-Rodríguez, 2009). In my preliminary searches using these terms, I found that the “Spanish” keyword referred mostly to family research in Spain or language-related studies rather than as a proxy for Hispanic families in the United States. I therefore replaced the “Spanish” term with the keywords Latina, Chicano, Chicana, and Mexican because I found that the articles more commonly used these terms in reference to U.S. Hispanic populations in the family research literature. Moreover, the articles commonly included the search terms Hispanic, Latino, and Latina to reference studies on U.S. Hispanic subpopulations (e.g., Cuban, Puerto Rican, Salvadoran). I also added the asterisk symbol (“*”) as a wildcard to the end of each search term (e.g., Hispanic*) to include other forms of the terms in the results. These included the plural form of the terms (e.g., Latinos), as well as hyphenated terms (e.g., Mexican-American).

The authors also searched for their keywords in any portion of text in peer-reviewed articles (Bernal & Domenech-Rodríguez, 2009). This meant that articles with the Hispanic terms found exclusively in the references, or mentioned sparsely in the narrative—sometimes only once—were included in their search results. My search results also included articles with the Hispanic terms in the references and narrative, but further limited the results to articles with the terms in the keyword, subject, title, or abstract search fields. This resulted in retrieved articles relating more closely to Hispanic family research rather than including articles containing only minor mention of the Hispanic terms.

To understand further the significance of the findings, I conducted two content analyses. The journal-level content analysis consisted of identifying the topics of special issues and sections published by the select journals in the prior decade and in 2011. My research goals were to determine if the journals had dedicated any issue or section to the study of Hispanic families and, if so, to identify its topic area. For the research design, I assumed the editors or guest editors would present the special issue or section in an introduction article and, therefore, these search terms would be included in its title or abstract. I also conducted a keyword content analysis of the articles identified in the prior decade and the articles identified in 2011 that met the Hispanic search criteria. Here, my research goal was to understand what these articles represented in terms of their research area (e.g., stress, acculturation, divorce) within the field of family studies.

Procedures

The top-15 ranked U.S. journals in the field of family studies based on their 5-year impact factor (2006-2010) came from the 2010 Journal Citation Reports: Social Sciences Edition (Thomson Reuters, 2011). Family journals published in other countries (e.g., Australia, England) were not included because of the unlikelihood of finding research articles within the context of Hispanic families in the United States. Each journal has an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN), a unique eight-digit number used to identify a print or electronic periodical publication. The publisher’s online website for the journal provided its ISSN.

The next step was to use Academic Search Complete to conduct an inventory of research articles within the context of Hispanic families for each of the select journals. Academic Search Complete is a comprehensive scholarly, multidisciplinary full-text database, with more than 8,500 full-text periodicals, including more than 7,300 peer-reviewed journals (EBSCO, 2012a). The Academic Search Complete database allows users to retrieve articles based on search words and other criteria. The following procedures (Steps 1-6) retrieve the total articles per journal published between 2001 and 2010.

Instructions to Retrieve All Articles per Journal Published Between 2001 and 2010

1. In the first search box, enter the journal’s ISSN(s) and select “IS ISSN (No Dashes)” for the field option from the drop down menu. If a journal has more than one ISSN, enter them in the same box with an “or” separating each ISSN (e.g., 01903187 or 19440391).

2. Check the box for the “Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals” option.

3. In “Published Date from” search option, enter the values 2001 and 2010.

4. In “Document Type” search option, select “Articles” as a filter.

5. Leave other search options to preset defaults.

6. Click “Search” to retrieve articles; the results indicate the total number of articles meeting the search criteria published in the select journal.

The next procedures (Steps 7-10) retrieve the Hispanic family articles published between 2001 and 2010.

7. Use the same search instructions (Steps 1-5) shown above.

8. In the second search box, enter the following text string: TI(Hispanic* or Latino* or Latina* or Mexican* or Chicano* or Chicana*) or SU(Hispanic* or Latino* or Latina* or Mexican* or Chicano* or Chicana*) or AB(Hispanic* or Latino* or Latina* or Mexican* or Chicano* or Chicana*) or KW(Hispanic* or Latino* or Latina* or Mexican* or Chicano* or Chicana*); use “Select a Field (optional)” as shown.

9. Link the first and second search boxes by selecting “AND” from the drop down menu.

10. Click “Search” to retrieve the Hispanic family articles with the search terms in the title (TI) or subject keyword (SU) or abstract (AB) or author keyword (KW).

I also identified the number of Hispanic family research articles in the top-15 ranked U.S. journals published in 2011 by following the same procedures outlined above with the exception of using “2011” for both date values in Step 3.

To conduct the journal-level content analysis, I used the 10-step procedures outlined above and linked an additional search box with the “AND” option and entered the following search string: AB(special issue or special section) or TI(special issue or special section); no field-box option was selected. During the search process, I used the Academic Search Complete save and download features to further review the article titles and detailed abstracts, eliminate redundant entries from the same journal issue, and identify the topic area for the special issue or section based on the descriptor keywords, author-supplied keywords, and the abstract.

To conduct the keyword content analysis of the articles, I reran the 10-step procedures outlined above and used the Academic Search Complete save and download features to collect the details of these select articles. An article consisted of multiple records each containing a prefix code identifying its content, for example, TI for title, AU for author, AB for abstract. I used SAS procedures to analyze for each article its descriptor keywords (prefix DE) and author-supplied keywords (prefix KW). Using the prior decade data, I printed out a list of the keyword phrases produced by the frequency analysis, sorted by counts in descending order, and identified—from the most frequent to the least—recurring single-word keywords contained in the phrases. Using SAS coding techniques, the software program scanned each of the keyword phrases for these single-word keywords and organized the keyword phrases into topic areas (e.g., stress, acculturation, divorce). This later process consisted of reiterative steps of reviewing, revising, and recoding to distill the keyword data. I then used the same process to analyze the keyword phrases from the 2011 articles based on the Hispanic search terms.

Results

Table 1 shows the results from these procedures for the prior decade. The bottom two rows of the table show that of the 8,038 total journal articles published between 2001 and 2010 among the top-15 ranked U.S. journals in the field of family studies, 370—or 4.6%—met the search criteria for Hispanic family research. The second column labeled “Journal Articles” shows the distribution of the 8,038 articles across the journals, while the third column labeled “% of Total Journal Articles” is the percentage distribution. The fourth column labeled “Hispanic Articles” shows the distribution across the top-15 journals of the 370 articles meeting the search criteria for Hispanic family research, while the fifth column labeled “% of Total Hispanic Articles” is the percentage distribution. The last column labeled “% of Journal Articles” shows each journal’s percentage of “Hispanic Articles” of the “Journal Articles” it published in the prior decade. These results reflect a broad range among the journals in their publications of Hispanic family research in the prior decade.

Table 1.

Articles in Prior Decade (2001-2010) Meeting Search Criteria for Hispanic Family Research From the Top-15 Ranked U.S. Journals in the Field of Family Studies.^a.

	2001-2010		Met search criteria
Journal	Journal Articles	% of total journal articles	Hispanic articles	% of Total Hispanic articles	% of journal articles
Child Abuse and Neglect	1,027	12.8	24	6.5	2.3
Child Maltreatment	331	4.1	5	1.4	1.5
Family Process	372	4.6	22	5.9	5.9
Family Relations	512	6.4	38	10.3	7.4
Future of Children	150	1.9	12	3.2	8.0
International Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health ^b	547	6.8	10	2.7	1.8
Journal of Early Adolescence	233	2.9	36	9.7	15.5
Journal of Family Issues	577	7.2	32	8.6	5.5
Journal of Family Psychology	724	9.0	30	8.1	4.1
Journal of Interpersonal Violence	950	11.8	26	7.0	2.7
Journal of Marriage and Family	944	11.7	53	14.3	5.6
Journal of Research on Adolescence	297	3.7	24	6.5	8.1
Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy	429	5.3	2	0.5	0.5
Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health ^c	765	9.5	54	14.6	7.1
Trauma Violence & Abuse	180	2.2	2	0.5	1.1
Total journal articles	8,038	100.0
Total Hispanic articles			370	100.0	4.6

Data from Journal Citation Reports: 2010 Social Sciences Edition; ranking based on 5-year impact factor, 2006 to 2010.

International Family Planning Perspectives (ISSN 01903187) prior to 2009.

Family Planning Perspectives (ISSN 00147354) prior to 2002.

I computed a Pearson correlation coefficient to assess the relationship among the top-15 ranked U.S. journals in the field of family studies between the Journal Articles (M = 535.9, SD = 289.6, N = 15) and the Hispanic Articles (M = 24.7, SD = 16.6, N = 15) published in the prior decade. The analysis showed a moderate, positive correlation between the two variables, r(15) = .53, p = .04, suggesting that in the prior decade, on average, journals with higher total publications had a higher tendency to publish Hispanic family research articles, and conversely, journals with lower total publications had a lower tendency to publish Hispanic family research articles.

The last column labeled “% of Journal Articles” shows each journal’s percentage of articles meeting the search criteria for Hispanic family research of its total articles published in the prior decade. In terms of relative output, the Journal of Early Adolescence earns special recognition because of its 233 articles published in the prior decade, 15.5% (n = 36) met the search criteria for Hispanic family research—3.5 times the average rate (4.4%) of the other top-15 ranked U.S. journals.

The “% of Total Hispanic Articles” column is the percentage distribution of the 370 articles that met the search criteria for Hispanic family research across the top-15 ranked U.S. journals in the field of family studies. In terms of overall percentage contribution to the publication of Hispanic family research, four journals standout: Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health (14.6%, n = 54), Journal of Marriage and Family (14.3%, n = 53), Family Relations (10.3%, n = 38), and Journal of Early Adolescence (9.7%, n = 36). These four journals combined generated 181 articles—almost half (48.9%) of the 370 articles that met the search criteria for Hispanic family research in the prior decade.

Hispanic Family Research in 2011: At the Start of the New Decade, 2011 to 2020

Table 2 shows the results from these procedures for 2011. The bottom two rows of the table show that of the 965 total journal articles published in 2011 among the top-15 ranked U.S. journals in the field of family studies, 61—or 6.3%—met the search criteria for Hispanic family research. The second column labeled “Journal Articles” shows the distribution of the 965 articles across the journals, while the third column labeled “% of Total Journal Articles” is the percentage distribution. The fourth column labeled “Hispanic Articles” shows the distribution across the top-15 journals of the 61 articles meeting the search criteria for Hispanic family research, while the fifth column labeled “% of Total Hispanic Articles” is the percentage distribution. The last column labeled “% of Journal Articles” shows each journal’s percentage of “Hispanic Articles” of the “Journal Articles” it published in the prior decade. These results reflect a broad range among the journals in their publications of Hispanic family research in the prior decade.

Table 2.

Articles in 2011 Meeting Search Criteria for Hispanic Family Research From the Top-15 Ranked U.S. Journals in the Field of Family Studies.^a.

	2011		Met search criteria
Journal	Journal articles	% of Total journal articles	Hispanic articles	% of total Hispanic articles	% of journal articles
Child Abuse and Neglect	118	12.2	2	3.3	1.7
Child Maltreatment	28	2.9	1	1.6	3.6
Family Process	36	3.7	3	4.9	8.3
Family Relations	47	4.9	1	1.6	2.1
Future of Children	21	2.2	7	11.5	33.3
International Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health ^b	43	4.5	1	1.6	2.3
Journal of Early Adolescence	41	4.2	6	9.8	14.6
Journal of Family Issues	70	7.3	3	4.9	4.3
Journal of Family Psychology	108	11.2	6	9.8	5.6
Journal of Interpersonal Violence	183	19.0	14	23.0	7.7
Journal of Marriage and Family	84	8.7	7	11.5	8.3
Journal of Research on Adolescence	75	7.8	1	1.6	1.3
Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy	30	3.1	1	1.6	3.3
Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health ^c	64	6.6	8	13.1	12.5
Trauma Violence & Abuse	17	1.8	0	0.0	0.0
Total journal articles	965	100.0
Total Hispanic articles			61	100.0	6.3

Data from Journal Citation Reports: 2010 Social Sciences Edition; ranking based on 5-year impact factor, 2006 to 2010.

International Family Planning Perspectives (ISSN 01903187) prior to 2009.

Family Planning Perspectives (ISSN 00147354) prior to 2002.

As before, I computed a Pearson correlation coefficient to assess the relationship among the top-15 ranked U.S. journals in the field of family studies between the total articles per journal (M = 64.3, SD = 44.8, N = 15) and the Hispanic family research articles per journal (M = 4.1, SD = 3.9, N = 15) published in 2011. The analysis showed a strong, positive correlation between the two variables, r(15) = .64, p = .01, suggesting that in 2011, on average, journals with higher total publications were more likely to publish Hispanic family research articles, and conversely, journals with lower total publications were less likely to publish Hispanic family research articles.

The last column labeled “% of Journal Articles” shows each journal’s percentage of articles meeting the search criteria for Hispanic family research of its total articles published in 2011. In terms of relative output, the Future of Children earns special recognition because of its 21 articles published in 2011, 33.3% (n = 7) met the search criteria for Hispanic family research—7.3 times the average rate (4.6%) of the other top-15 ranked U.S. journals.

The “% of Total Hispanic Articles” column is the percentage distribution of the 61 articles that met the search criteria for Hispanic family research across the top-15 ranked U.S. journals in the field of family studies. In terms of overall percentage contribution to the publication of Hispanic family research, four journals standout: Journal of Interpersonal Violence (23.0%, n = 14), Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health (13.1%, n = 8), followed by a tie for third place between Future of Children (11.5%, n = 7) and Journal of Marriage and Family (11.5%, n = 7). These four journals combined generated 36 articles—or about three fifths (59.0%) of the 61 articles in 2011 that met the search criteria for Hispanic family research.

I then computed a paired t test to assess the differences among the journals in their percentages of Hispanic family research articles published in the prior decade (M = 5.1%, SD = 3.9%, N = 15) compared with 2011 (M = 7.3%, SD = 8.3%, N = 15). The paired t test found no statistical significance in the Hispanic family research publication rates among the journals between these two time periods, t(14) = 1.13, p = .28. The implication is that the journals, on average, had not significantly increased their publication rates of Hispanic family research articles in 2011 compared with that in the prior decade when Hispanics were the largest, most rapidly growing ethnic group in the United States.

Content Analysis of Special Issues and Sections

The journal-level content analysis consisted of identifying the topics of special issues and sections published by the select journals in the prior decade and in 2011. Using an online catalog for journal searches, I counted the number of total issues published in the prior decade and in 2011 for each of the select journals in this study. Of the 840 issues published among the journals in the prior decade, 46 (5.5%) were special issues or sections. Of these 46 special editions, only three (6.5%) were devoted to Hispanic families. These included two Family Process issues (June 2006, Volume 45, Issue 2, and June 2009, Volume 48, Issue 2), both on the topic of cultural adaptation research and interventions; and a Journal of Early Adolescence issue (February 2009, Volume 29, Issue 1) on the topic of Latino early adolescents. Of the 95 issues among the journals in 2011, four (4.2%) published as special issues or sections—none focused on Hispanic families.

Content Analysis of Articles Based on Hispanic Search Terms

The keyword content analysis indicated that the 370 articles from the prior decade contained 3,462 keyword records with a mean of 9.4 per article (SD = 3.8, Min = 2, Max = 30). A frequency analysis revealed that 1,401 nonduplicate keyword phrases existed among these records with a mean of 2.5 records for each keyword phrase (SD = 4.4, Min = 1.0, Max = 57). Of the 18 topic areas distilled from the keyword phrases, the 370 articles were represented most by race/ethnicity (n = 111, 30.0%), human relations (n = 86, 23.2%), sex-related health (n = 82, 22.2%), psychological behavior (n = 58, 15.7%), and spousal abuse (n = 52, 14.1%).

In comparison, the 61 articles from 2011 contained 927 keyword records with a mean of 16.6 per article (SD = 8.0, Min = 5, Max = 34). A frequency analysis further showed that 456 nonduplicate keyword phrases existed among these records with a mean of 2.0 records for each keyword phrase (SD = 2.6, Min = 1.0, Max = 26). Of the 16 topic areas distilled from the keyword phrases, the 61 articles were represented most by human relations (n = 19, 31.1%), race/ethnicity (n = 16, 26.2%), domestic abuse (n = 16, 26.2%), and sex-related health (n = 13, 21.3%).

Discussion

The findings from this study suggest that Bernal and Domenech-Rodríguez (2009) may have underestimated the number of Hispanic citations in the psychological literature and in the Family Process journal during the time period 2000 to 2008. The authors found that more than 99% of the psychological literature and Family Process articles during this time period did not reference Hispanics. In comparison, the findings from this study revealed that 95.4% of the articles in the top-15 ranked U.S. journals did not reference Hispanic families. More specifically, 94.1% of the articles did not reference Hispanic families in the Family Process journal during the prior decade.

In spite of the differences between the Bernal and Domenech-Rodríguez (2009) and current results, the findings from this study suggest two dimensions of disparity between the available family research within the context of the Hispanic population—as identified from the search procedures—and its importance as the fastest growing ethnic group in the United States. The first dimension of disparity is in the quantity of Hispanic family research articles found among the selected journals in the prior decade. For every Hispanic family research article identified from the search procedures, on average, the journals published 20.7 articles not meeting the Hispanic search criteria. Furthermore, 2011 was only slightly better—for every Hispanic family research article identified from the search procedures, on average, the journals published 14.8 not meeting the search criteria. Against this vast backdrop of publications, the implication is that Hispanic families continue to appear as outliers in mainstream family research.

The second dimension of disparity is in the quality, relevance, and recognized contributions from the identified Hispanic family research articles to the field of family studies. These attributes are hallmarks of the top-15 ranked U.S. journals selected for this study, and therefore, the Hispanic family research articles found among these journals are likewise within the context of these attributes. Rather, an issue that lingers is whether these identified Hispanic family articles are sufficient in representing the full landscape of family research.

The Journal of Marriage and Family published a set of 21 essays in the 2010 June special issue that reviewed the waterfront of research in the field over the past 10 years. The seasoned scholars who contributed to this volume thoroughly and critically reviewed the significant advances (theoretical, empirical, and methodological) in designated areas over the past decade. These 21 areas included the most widely studied topics during the last decade (e.g., parenting, marriage, family violence, divorce, and work and family), as well as timely topics (e.g., immigration and war and terrorism) and understudied populations (e.g., lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender families and families of color). The journal issue also reported on emerging areas of research with tremendous potential for family researchers (e.g., biosocial influences on families and family policy).

If this study’s select journals represented evenly the 21 topic areas across the 8,038 articles in the prior decade, this would result, on average, in each topic area having 365.1 articles outside the context of Hispanic families compared with 17.6 articles within the context of Hispanic families. For the 965 articles published in 2011, the same assumption would result, on average, in each topic area having 43.0 articles outside the context of Hispanic families compared with 2.9 articles within the context of Hispanic families. These comparisons illustrate the insufficiency of Hispanic family research in the prior decade and in 2011 with regard to quality, relevance, and recognized contributions to the field of family studies.

The content analysis of special issues and sections also illustrate these insufficiencies, in that so few of the select journals commissioned an issue or section specific to Hispanic family research over the prior decade—and none in 2011. I am not advocating, however, for a massive proliferation of special issues on Hispanic family research in prestigious journals. Special issues allow, as intended, the bold steps that spur innovation in important areas of scholarship researchers might otherwise overlook—but too many special issues may actually retard knowledge generation (McKinley, 2007; Mowday, 2006; Priem, 2006).

Priem (2006) proposes that whenever a journal commissions a special issue, our normally open “marketplace,” where new ideas are born and fostered, swings toward a guided “command economy” where ideas are controlled and conform to a journal editor’s agenda. The more special issues commissioned, the greater this swing. One disconcerting outcome of special issue proliferation is the unintended “squeezing out” of quality articles on other topics that otherwise would have appeared in regular issues. Special issues may also have the unintended outcome of redirecting scholars away from topics they otherwise would have pursued and instead, toward the special issue topics. This effect may continue for many years because researchers may focus on extending their work that appeared in the special issue (Priem, 2006).

Even so, the need for Hispanic family research has never been greater. Unfortunately, the economy has not yet generated sufficient new jobs for low-income parents (Aber & Chaudry, 2010). Under these conditions of severe economic distress, research indicates that parents are unable to invest in their children’s nutrition, health, and education (Elder, 1999; Kalil & Wightman, 2009) and that parents’ emotional state can become tense resulting in harsh and punitive parenting (Gershoff, Aber, Raver, & Lennon, 2007). In family environments as these, low-income children are most vulnerable to high levels of stress that then expresses itself in the form of poor physical and mental health, low or failing school grades, and gang involvement (American Psychological Association, 2012).

The keyword content analysis of the articles provide some measure of where researchers have focused their scholarship in Hispanic family studies among the 370 and 61 articles that met the search criteria in the prior decade and 2011, respectively. The content analysis revealed the select articles represented some topic areas more or less than others. The following three examples propose how researchers could expand Hispanic family research in select topic areas—relevant to today’s Hispanic families—but less represented in the Hispanic family research literature. The first example examines the research area of assimilation, which had 28 articles (7.6%) in the prior decade (N = 370) and 7 articles (11.5%) in 2011 (N = 61). The second example examines the research area of childhood obesity, which had no article on this topic in the prior decade (N = 370) and only one article (1.6%) in 2011 (N = 61). The third example examines the research area of mass violence (war or terrorism). Here, the content analysis indicated no articles on this topic in the prior decade (N = 370) or in 2011 (N = 61). Although the author acknowledges the examples do not provide enough details, due to space limitations, for guiding researchers step-by-step toward implementation, they may serve sufficiently to illustrate the realm of possibilities for moving Hispanic families from outlier to mainstream family research.

Hispanic Immigrant Families: Assimilation

Glick’s (2010) review of research on immigrant families indicates the field has advanced over the prior decade in understanding the importance of immigrants’ selectivity from the sending community, the relevance of assimilation in family formation patterns, and the processes of individual acculturation within the context of the family. Immigrant integration—how immigrants and their families adjust their expectations and family behaviors from the sending community to realities experienced in the United States—is an immediate concern for foundations and immigrant-serving organizations (Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees, 2010). Young immigrant children in particular face a broad array of challenging circumstances that make integration difficult. In addition to poverty, racial prejudice, and discrimination, these challenging circumstances include high residential mobility; coping with emotional stresses due to adjustments to new social norms and a new institutional environment and/or traumas due to war, family disruptions, or separations; and inadequate social support for psychological well-being (Vernez & Abrahamse, 1996).

Poor immigrant children are also more likely to receive limited linguistic support at home from parents and, therefore, are more often in need of educational support in school to develop their native language, which enables the acquisition of English proficiency (McCarthy, 1998). Research shows that early education programs can prepare immigrant children to enter elementary school with more advanced English skills, thereby increasing their likelihood of school and academic success (Magnuson, Lahaie, & Waldfogel, 2006). Children of immigrant parents, however, have lower rates of preschool enrollment at ages 3 and 4 than children of nonimmigrant parents (Fortuny, Hernandez, & Chaudry, 2010). The implication for immigrant children is that this may hinder future school success and possibly impede their integration into U.S. society (Hernandez, 2004; Portes & Rumbaut, 2001).

Increasing the enrollment of immigrant children could potentially help close the gap in school readiness between them and other children (Magnuson et al., 2006). Understanding how best to achieve this goal is of central interest to the education community (Brown, Molfese, & Molfese, 2008). Immediate research on Hispanic immigrant families could contribute to this central interest and improve access to high-quality, early education programs for immigrant children within the broader context of K-3 grade (Bogard, Traylor, & Takanishi, 2008).

Immigrant family research would also benefit from this effort. Glick (2010) cites that the next challenge in this new decade for researchers is to examine immigrant family processes in the proper temporal ordering with the migration process and in synchronicity with the family life cycle. This will require more detailed data collection of family migration histories, family formation histories, and conditions in sending and receiving locations. Given its prominent role in the lives of families, the public school is a logical place where researchers could carry out these studies. No other institution has as much continuous and intensive contact with children during their first two decades of life (Story, Kaphingst, & French, 2006). Most children attend schools 180 days per year for 6 or more hours, making public schools a convenient access point for these data collections that would provide a more comprehensive understanding of how migration affects Hispanic immigrant families and their future generations.

Hispanic Families and Health: Childhood Obesity

Carr and Springer’s (2010) review of research on families and health in the prior decade converges on the association of health to family structure, process, and context based on relationships; the nature and timing of one’s transition in or out of a family status; and resources available prior to, during, and after transition. Recent studies have also identified specific interpersonal interactions that adversely affect child and adult health. Researchers in these studies note, however, that training programs in building healthy relationships among parents and other family members can improve these interactions (Halford, Markman, & Stanley, 2008).

Public schools are a natural place for interventions aimed at controlling and preventing childhood obesity. The vast majority of schools nationwide participate in the National School Lunch Program, and of these schools, more than three quarters also offer the School Breakfast Program (Crepinsek & Fox, 2004). Moreover, schools have unique venues to promote physical activity like physical education classes, recess time, competitive and noncompetitive sports, and programs like dance classes, running events, and walking clubs (Peterson & Fox, 2007).

The body of high-quality research on the effectiveness of school-based interventions to prevent or reduce obesity, however, provides limited evidence for researchers to understand clearly how to structure and implement interventions in schools to achieve maximum effect (Katz et al., 2005; Peterson & Fox, 2007). What researchers do know is that parents are essential to changing their children’s behaviors associated with obesity (Golan & Crow; 2004; Resnikow & Vaughn, 2006; Story et al., 2006).

Several decades of research has revealed that, as in other areas of childhood development, parents act as powerful socialization agents (Cullen et al., 2001; Hardy, Wadsworth, & Kuh, 2000; Young, Fors, & Hayes, 2004). Parents’ decisions determine their children’s opportunities for recreation and physical activities, as well as about food availability in the home, shaping their children’s dietary practices (Savage, Orlet-Fisher, & Birch, 2007). Thus, parents set the family’s health practices, which may promote an “obesigenic” home environment encouraging obesity in their children (Golan & Crow, 2004). School-based childhood obesity programs can influence a family’s health practices by educating parents on making healthier choices and by connecting them to community resources to support healthier lifestyle changes (Peterson & Fox, 2007).

Carr and Springer (2010) state that interdisciplinary teams of researchers have begun to investigate the complex ways demographic, socioeconomic, biological, psychosocial, and genetic factors link family structures and processes to health outcomes over the life course. The authors expect researchers will make advances in these areas in this new decade by using cutting-edge quantitative research methods; by relying on qualitative methods to investigate in depth the distinctive ways families affect health in underresearched subpopulations; and by developing concepts, measures, and models to link family roles and processes to specific health outcomes.

Researchers could accelerate this process by conducting evidence-based research with Hispanic families to validate the effects of interventions on specific health outcomes (e.g., heart disease, cancer, diabetes, child attention- deficit hyperactivity disorder, asthma) within the context of a dyadic research design. In such a design, all family members participate in the data collection to estimate how much each person’s health outcome is associated with the others’ health behavior (Carr & Springer, 2010). Thus, researchers would include in these studies collections of genetic and qualitative data from Hispanic family members to explore the relative contributions of genetic and social influences on health. As cited earlier, public schools are a convenient access point for data collections on families because most children attend schools 180 days per year for 6 or more hours. Similarly, public schools would provide optimum places for researchers to implement dyadic research designs, thereby resulting in a more comprehensive understanding into the health of Hispanic families.

Hispanic Families in the Context of Mass Violence: Terrorism

MacDermid-Wadsworth’s (2010) review of research on family risk and resilience in the context of mass violence describes how the prior decade introduced families around the world to increases in preemptive war, large-scale attacks on civilians, and global instability. The author cites that most of the family research during this time period focused on the psychological impact of trauma rather than in understanding the complexities of families’ experiences with mass violence and the processes for avoiding long-term negative consequences to individual health and family relationships. Mass violence itself is the source of this research disparity. Because of dangerous and unstable circumstances, most researchers conduct studies when conditions have begun to improve rather than when family challenges are most critical (McGinn, 2000). Researchers do not therefore have a complete understanding of family experiences under conditions of mass violence in ways that acknowledge not just the family’s vulnerability but also resilience and diversity (Barber, 2008). To advance the field, new research is needed that examines how family dynamics interact with individual psychological health and other factors to prevent trauma, minimize illness, and support family functioning, as well as the biological aspects of trauma and how they interact with family relationships (MacDermid-Wadsworth, 2010).

Yet the need to understand Hispanic families’ experiences within the context of mass violence is urgent—here in the United States along the Mexico border. In 2006, the Mexican government of Felipe Calderón launched a military offensive against the country’s drug cartels. This sparked vicious turf wars among rival groups over coveted trafficking routes along the U.S.–northern Mexico border. Across from El Paso, Texas, for example, the border city of Ciudad Juárez experienced in 2010 higher levels of violence because of the drug cartels. The cartels’ violence fueled an increase in criminal offences, particularly kidnappings, extortion, and threats, often carried out on the cartels’ behalf. Gun battles were common on the city’s streets even during the day, and businesses refusing to pay the cartels’ “fees” had their premises burned down. Of Mexico’s homicides in 2010, 28% took place in Juárez and the city’s homicide rate rose to the equivalent of 200 per 100,000 people making it the most violent in the world. Over the past 3 years, these violent conditions in Juárez have resulted in 116,000 abandoned homes and 11,000 closed businesses. Between 2007 and 2009, some 110,000 displaced individuals fled to the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Durango, Coahuila, and Veracruz, while an additional estimated 55,000 people left for El Paso, Texas, and 68,000 for other U.S. cities (Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, 2010).

MacDermid-Wadsworth’s (2010) article is therefore timely for advocating the expansion of Hispanics in family research within the context of mass violence. Researchers need theoretical perspectives that within the context of mass violence connect the mechanisms of daily life and family functioning within the broader community infrastructure and cultural norms (Murthy, 2007). They also need to develop theory-driven models that explain variations among individuals and families to gain insights on how to prevent mass violence—or at the very least minimize the effects on families in its aftermath.

The author concludes the review article by inviting the reader “to find a global challenge more worthy of researchers’ attention than preventing and minimizing families’ misery and preparing and supporting their resilience whenever and wherever they are confronted by mass violence” (MacDermid-Wadsworth, 2010, p. 553). In so doing, researchers should remember that families in misery from mass violence are sometimes no farther away than in our own backyard. Displaced Mexican families live among us—invisible in our communities from fear of deportation. Others reside in cartel-influenced border towns where, if feasible, they enroll their children across the border in the safety of U.S. public schools. Researchers studying these displaced families and their children attending our public schools would actualize MacDermid-Wadsworth’s (2010) global challenge—a worthy contribution to the welfare of Hispanics seeking refuge in the United States.

Conclusions and Recommendations

The top-15 ranked U.S. journals in the field of family studies published more than 8,000 articles in the prior decade—the same time period when Hispanics were also the largest, most rapidly growing ethnic group in the United States. This study contributed to the field of family studies by using quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze these articles per journal for empirical evidence that indicated the importance of Hispanic families within this literature. Further empirical evidence came from extending the analysis to 2011. The evidence presented suggested insufficiency of Hispanic family research with regard to quantity, quality, relevance, and recognized contributions to the field of family studies. The content analysis of special issues and sections also illustrated these insufficiencies, in that so few of the select journals commissioned an issue or section specific to Hispanic family research over the prior decade—and none in 2011.

Despite the consequential risks from massive proliferation of special issues (Priem, 2006), the findings suggest ample room in the top-15 ranked U.S. journals in family studies for special issues on Hispanic family research. These elite journals would serve us best, however, by being selective when commissioning special issues on Hispanic family research. Here, the journal editors might convene to launch joint or collaborative special issues on Hispanic family research that complement—rather than compete for—each other’s topic areas. This would allow researchers to take the bold steps to expand Hispanic family research while preserving the open “marketplace” for ideas (Priem, 2006). Concurrently, funding organizations might also collaborate to coordinate a portion of their research awards to initiate this research effort.

In comparison, the keyword content analysis showed some topic areas more or less represented than others among the 370 and 61 articles focused on Hispanic family research in the prior decade and 2011, respectively. Immigrant assimilation, childhood obesity, and mass violence due to the U.S.–Mexico border drug war were some of the topic areas less represented but very relevant to today’s Hispanic families. Examples illustrated the realm of possibilities—within these topic areas—for moving Hispanic families from outlier to mainstream family research. The author acknowledges that studies of these topics may exist in prestigious journals for other fields, as listed in the 2010 Journal Citation Reports: Social Sciences Edition (Thomson Reuters, 2011). Some of the 56 fields listed in the edition include, for example, demographics, health, and psychiatry, which may have journals that publish studies related to immigrant assimilation, childhood obesity, and mass violence, respectively. Thus, the findings in this study may be incomplete until future research extends the analysis to other fields. In spite of this limitation, this study’s contributions to the field of family research are rooted firmly within a broader historical context.

In the early days of evaluation in the fields of health and social work was the guiding question: “Does an intervention work?” Then in 1967, Gordon L. Paul expanded on this question and, as a challenge to researchers, asked: “What treatment, by whom, is most effective for this individual, with that specific problem, and under which set of circumstances?” His intent was to clarify more clearly the context in which the intervention worked or did not work, given that interventions operated within the needs and situation of the person receiving treatment.

In an attempt to address portions of Paul’s guiding question, researchers advocated for many years the inclusion of human factors like gender, sexual orientation, and disability in intervention evaluation (Boyd-Franklin, 2003; Falicov, 1998; McGoldrick et al., 2005; Pinsof & Lebow, 2005; Szapocznik & Kurtines, 1993). They often excluded, however, the human factor of culture—as a construct for ethnicity—from such discourse (Bernal et al., 2003; McGoldrick & Hardy, 2008; Wampold, 2001). The reasons were partly due to their difficulty in defining the concept of “culture” and in how to transform such a construct into measures that could predict outcomes or explain behaviors or attitudes. Thus, little research considered the interactive effects of culture with race, language, and socioeconomic status, among other variables, on the treatment outcomes.

Family research is crucial to resolving these disparities more so today than 45 years ago when Paul (1967) proposed his question as a challenge to researchers. The long-term expected outlook is for the Hispanic population to change U.S. demographics in ways that will only increase demand for social services and interventions. This is why Hispanic family research must progress beyond the prior decade. I appeal urgently to researchers to move Hispanic families from outlier to mainstream research to ensure policy makers, social service providers, and other stakeholders use the best information to guide social policy and practice.

To consider the complexities of human factors such as culture, researchers will need to develop appropriate psychometric instruments, and interventions may require translation, adaptation, or major revision based on the context of the Hispanic population in the study (Bernal, 2006; Bravo, 2003). Moreover, researchers will need to develop multicultural and Spanish language competency to work successfully with Hispanic families and children. Researchers may see these challenges as daunting, but the return on this effort will move Hispanic families from outlier to mainstream family research, averting another lost decade of opportunities for research relevant to the health and welfare of a growing U.S. Hispanic population.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Dr. Nancy Chavkin for her exceptional advice on an early draft of the study; the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments; and Ms. Marta López for her pragmatic revisions to the final manuscript.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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