# Linking Community and Family Characteristics to Adolescent Adjustment

> **NIH NIH R01** · GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY · 2020 · $525,395

## Abstract

Latino youth in immigrant families are the fastest growing segment of the U.S. school population and face elevated
risks of externalizing and internalizing problems and barriers to social and academic competence. Compromised
adolescent adjustment harms youth and adult health and promotes inter-generational transmissions of inequality.
Parenting processes are strong, malleable correlates of Latino youth adjustment. A glaring weakness in Latino parenting
research is inadequate attention to extra-familial cultural demands and opportunities. These demands and opportunities
include language use and co-ethnic concentration in neighborhoods; discrimination and support in school and peer
contexts; Latino student concentration in schools; peer bullying victimization; and immigrant experiences tied to
documentation status, discrimination, migration, and transnationalism. Gaps in research are pronounced for new
immigrant destinations, where a lack of established co-ethnic enclaves and language barriers pose unique challenges for
Latino families adjusting to life in the U.S. The main goal of this application is to specify the cascade of effects from
extra-familial cultural demands and opportunities to Latino adolescent adjustment in an emerging immigrant area. Using
culturally informed theory, multi-level data, and multiple mediator models, this research will test the hypothesis that
Latino cultural inclusion and support in neighborhood, school, peer and immigrant contexts will lead to declines in
youth's externalizing and internalizing problems and increases in youth's social and academic competence during
adolescence. The study's mediating hypothesis is that Latino cultural inclusion and support external to the family will
influence youth outcomes indirectly by reducing acculturation-related stress (immigrant stressors such as deportation
fears, social isolation, and language barriers; parent-child acculturation gaps; demands on youth language brokering) and,
in turn, increasing effective parenting (supportive parenting, parental monitoring, family cohesion, low conflict). Effective
parenting is hypothesized to be associated reciprocally with adolescents' positive adjustment. Tests of moderated
mediation will examine variations in pathways to youth outcomes by adolescents' gender, age, length of U.S. residence,
and transition to high school. Using an intentionally missing data design, this study will have 8 time points of data
spanning 6th to 11th grade for 600 Latino parent-youth dyads representative of Latinos in a suburban Atlanta school
district. The PI's research and partnerships with the school district strengthen feasibility for the proposed study. Data will
be analyzed using multilevel, structural equation modeling. In a key departure from individual- and family-level studies,
this study will use an integrated theoretical model of culturally relevant extra-familial factors salient to acculturation
stressors, parenting, and Latino adolescent adjustm...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9925658
- **Project number:** 5R01HD090232-04
- **Recipient organization:** GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Kathleen M Roche
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $525,395
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2017-09-01 → 2022-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9925658

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9925658, Linking Community and Family Characteristics to Adolescent Adjustment (5R01HD090232-04). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9925658. Licensed CC0.

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