Journal of Black Psychology

This study organized a participatory action research team of four street life–oriented Black men to examine attitudes toward opportunity in a community sample of street life–oriented Black men ranging between the ages of 16 and 65. Data were collected in the form of 371 surveys and two group interviews. Most of the data collection took place inside the street communities of Harlem, New York City, and Paterson, New Jersey. Descriptive data suggest that the men hold positive as well as negative attitudes toward learning and their overall educational experience. Quantitative and qualitative results suggest that an intergenerational set of attitudes toward opportunity exists in this community sample of street life–oriented Black men. Specifically, a set of one-way analysis of variance revealed older street generations to hold more negative attitudes toward overall, educational, and economic opportunity. In addition, a content analysis revealed three dominant themes in relation to the code economic survival: (a) commitment to family/community, (b) personal motivation, and (c) a moral posture.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relative importance of racial socialization and social support in the resiliency of African Americans. It was hypothesized that social support and racial socialization would predict the resiliency of 154 African American undergraduate students at a large midwestern university. They completed the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MPSS), the Teenager Experience of Racial Socialization Scale (TERS), and the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC). Findings from hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated that receiving racial socialization messages and perceiving that one had social support accounted for the largest proportion of variance in resiliency scores. Implications for parents and mental health providers are discussed.

The common explanation as to why individuals smoke is that the act of smoking relieves psychological stress, yet very few studies have examined the association between stress and smoking from a sociocultural perspective among African American women. The current study examined the paradigm of sociocultural stress and its association between smoking risk and likelihood of quitting among African American women. One hundred ninety-eight African American women, approximately half of whom were current smokers, completed a battery of questionnaires that included a smoking risk survey and measures of acculturation, stress, and coping. A theoretically based path analytic model revealed that the acculturative stress factors of cultural mistrust (β = .39) and socialization (β = .17) were predictive of perceptions of race-related stress (R ² = .18), which were predictive of the number of race-related events experienced (R ² = .51), which contributed to reports of general life stress (R ² = .07), which was subsequently associated with smoking risk (R ² = .03). The findings suggest that smoking cessation intervention programs for African American women should be tailored to address sociocultural issues related to stress that impacts their smoking.

Since the onset of the AIDS epidemic, Black gay and bisexual men have been at a substantial risk for acquiring HIV. Substance use has been identified as a significant risk factor for engaging in HIV sexual risk behavior. The purpose of this formative research investigation was to examine substance use in relation to sexual behavior through differentiating users versus nonusers of alcohol and recreational drugs before or during sex in a community-based sample of 481 Black gay and bisexual men in the New York metropolitan area. Binary logistic regression results demonstrated that alcohol use before or during sex was predictive of having a primary sex partner, casual sex partner, higher income, previous sexually transmitted infection testing, and a higher number of male sex partners. Recreational drug use before or during sex was predictive of having an HIV positive status, casual sex partner, unprotected anal intercourse with a male sex partner, and being younger. These findings present significant formative implications for the influence of substance use in relation to HIV sexual risk behavior in Black gay and bisexual men.

This study investigated whether African American high school freshman students experience stereotype threat when taking a test that is seen as a predictor of their success on a high-stakes test. The authors conceptually replicated a previous study by Kellow and Jones (2005) using a true experimental design, as opposed to a quasi-experimental design. White students scored statistically significantly higher than African American students when told that their test performance would be predictive of their performance on a statewide, high-stakes standardized test. The following potential mediators of stereotype threat were included in the study and the effects of each are discussed: (a) perceptions of ability and expectancy for success, (b) achievement goal orientation, (c) anxiety, and (d) perceptions of stereotype threat. The results suggest that African American students are at a disadvantage compared to White students when their knowledge and skills are measured using a high-stakes standardized test. Implications for high-stakes testing of African American students are discussed.