Investigating Cultural Mismatch and its Associations to Health and Academic Outcomes Among Latinx Students During the Transition to College: The Moderating Role of Education Context and Resilience

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2.0 PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Stress may play a significant role in the finding that Latinx students enroll in college but are less likely to graduate than students from other racial/ethnic groups. Prior qualitative, survey, and experimental work suggests that Latinx first-generation college (FGC) students experience cultural mismatch (CM) – a mismatch between interdependent values learned at home and independent values of post-secondary institutions – during their transition to four-year research-centered universities. The stress from this mismatch negatively disrupts overall wellness including health (self-reported mental/physical distress) and academics and may be directly linked to biological and clinical markers of health. Thus, there is a dire need to understand the connection between CM and negative health and academic adjustment outcomes to inform meaningful, targeted interventions, that ensure health and educational equity for all students. The proposed research will extend prior work by conducting a comparative longitudinal project of Latinx FGC students experiences with CM during the transition to college. Because CM is expected to vary across contexts, two separate cohorts of Latinx FGC student freshmen across three public Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs; community college, teaching-centered university, research-centered university) that are similar in ethnic diversity and percentage of Latinx students will complete a survey, interview, as well as biological and clinical assessments of health (e.g., diurnal cortisol, body-mass-index) across three time-points: their first and second semester of college and one-year later. Academic transcripts will also be accessed. The project will describe the trajectories of Latinx students’ experiences with CM and their pattern of associations with mental and physical health, as well as academic adjustment outcomes (self-report and objective measures; Aim 1). The project also examines whether this experience varies across educational contexts where Latinx students enroll at increasingly high levels (Aim 2) and will identify resilience factors that protect Latinx students against CM and the negative role it has on adjustment outcomes (Aim 3). Results will provide an in-depth understanding of CM, when it is most salient in impacting adjustment, as well as elucidate the mechanisms that occur when students experience mismatch. Investigation of comparative educational contexts, as well as resilience, will enable the scientific field to hone in on the role structural, individual, family, community, and cultural factors play in experiences of CM. The results will have a significant impact on future research and best practices (interventions, programs, policies) that focus on the improvement of Latinx college students’ holistic health. Results can also be beneficial to society at large as CM likely influences health in other contexts or groups. Dissemination will take form of as open-source reports and presentations of findings to be shared with students, faculty and administrators across research sites as well as all HSIs in the nation via partnership with the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU).