Sex Differences in Achievement Striving of Black Youth

描述（由申请人提供）：这个项目的目标是调查黑人青年在追求成就方面的性别差异的原因。我们将研究在非裔美国青少年的父母信仰和做法，青少年信仰和成就努力之间的关系。我们假设，父母关于歧视的社会化信息导致儿童发展归因信念，否认个人对成就结果的责任。这些年轻人不把学业成绩归因于努力或能力等内部因素，而是把结果——尤其是失败——归因于歧视。尽管这些信念允许黑人青年在面对失败时保持高度的自尊，但它们并不鼓励追求成就。由于种族社会化中的性别差异，黑人男孩比黑人女孩更容易形成这些归因信念，并且也更容易形成强调他们在非学术领域（如社会关系、体育和音乐）能力的身份。相反，黑人女孩被社会灌输了种族自豪感。强烈的自豪感，加上对个人效能的信念，使黑人女孩能够发展自我认同，包括对学术能力的信念，从而增强课堂动力和对失败的适应性反应。我们还将研究种族自豪感、社会化、积极的种族认同和内部归因是否会减少成就和成就奋斗中的性别差异。我们建议在一组200名非裔美国青年和他们的父母中测试这些假设。青少年将完成种族社会化、种族中心性、性别和种族刻板印象、归因、感知能力、课堂参与和自尊的测量。标准化成绩将从学校记录中检索。父母将完成种族社会化、种族中心性、性别和种族刻板印象、关于儿童成就结果的因果归因以及对儿童能力和成就奋斗的看法的测量。这项研究的发现将促进我们对非洲裔美国青年中根深蒂固的性别差异的理解，并为针对非洲裔美国男孩的干预点提供建议。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of this project is to investigate causes of gender differences in achievement striving among Black youth. We will examine the relationships among parent beliefs and practices, adolescent beliefs, and achievement striving in African-American adolescents. We hypothesize that parental socialization messages about discrimination lead children to develop attributional beliefs that deny personal responsibility for achievement outcomes. Instead of attributing academic outcomes to internal factors such as effort or ability, these youth attribute outcomes--particularly failure--to discrimination. Although these beliefs permit Black youth to maintain high self-regard in the face of failure, they do not encourage achievement striving. Because of gender differences in race socialization, Black boys are more likely to develop these attributional beliefs than Black girls, and also to develop identities that emphasize their competence in non-academic realms such as social relationships, sports, and music. In contrast, Black girls are socialized to have racial pride. A strong sense of pride, coupled with beliefs about personal efficacy, enable Black girls to develop self-identities that include a belief in academic competence, thereby enhancing classroom motivation and adaptive responses to failure. We will also examine whether race pride socialization, positive racial identity, and internal attributions reduce gender differences in achievement and achievement striving. We propose to test these hypotheses in a group of 200 African-American youth and their parents. Adolescents will complete measures of race socialization, race centrality, gender and race stereotypes, attributions, perceived competence, classroom engagement, and self-esteem. Standardized achievement scores will be retrieved from school records. Parents will complete measures of race socialization, race centrality, gender and race stereotypes, causal attributions regarding the child's achievement outcomes, and perceptions of the child's competence and achievement striving. Findings from the proposed study should advance our understanding of firmly entrenched gender differences among African-American youth and provide recommendations for points of intervention aimed at African-American boys.