Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant: Pathways Toward Understanding the Psychosocial Dimensions of Reproductive Health

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Emory University doctoral student, Tyralynn Frazier, supervised by Dr. Carol Worthman, will undertake research on the relative influence of race, culture, economic status, and place of residence on reproductive health outcomes. The researcher will simultaneously focus on both race and place by investigating if similarities and differences in localized pregnancy ideas are shaped by racial and socioeconomic belonging.The research will be carried out among a population-based sample of women living in a county in the state of Georgia. The researcher will employ cultural consensus modeling first, to see if cultural models of pregnancy behaviors differ by race, and second to determine if relative consonance with locally accepted pregnancy models predicts stress levels and pre-term births. Race is a frequently used, but often under-theorized category. Using domain analysis methods and cultural consensus modeling, this study aims to put race as an assumed cultural grouping into question in the context of pregnancy behaviors. This research is important because by emphasizing culturally defined influences on reproductive health behaviors it may contribute to understanding negative birth outcome patterns that are not fully explained by demographic factors or socioeconomic status. If the hypotheses presented hold true then a broader implication of this work would be to understand how the emergence of new pregnancy beliefs and behaviors may produce generational differences in reproductive health disparities in immigrant populations in the United States and other industrialized countries.