Measuring Daily Experiences of Racial Discrimination in African American Youth

描述(由申请人提供)：非裔美国人遭受种族歧视的经历与青春期几种类型的心理和身体健康病理有关，包括药物使用、心理症状和外化行为。这些问题不仅扰乱了青春期的正常发育过程，还造成了非裔美国人成年后基于种族的健康差距。然而，与衡量种族歧视经历的时间、背景和内容有关的方法学问题大大限制了理解种族歧视在非裔美国青年的日常生活和整体健康中的作用的能力。为了改进测量和促进理论和心理测量工具之间的协同作用，这笔赠款将开发和验证经验种族歧视的量化测量，用于非裔美国青少年的纵向物质使用和公共卫生研究。这项措施将通过以下方式改善非裔美国人青少年种族歧视研究的现状：1)利用日常日记测量，尽量减少回溯性偏见；2)包括非裔美国人青少年生活中常见的一系列背景(如学校、互联网、体育)；3)采用混合方法来验证措施的内容。通过这种方式，拟议的研究项目将采用创新的多维、全面和混合方法来开发一种针对非裔美国青少年的日常经验种族歧视测量方法。目前研究和培训研究金申请的最终目标是使申请者做好准备，成为一名独立研究员，在非洲裔美国青年的有经验的种族歧视和健康差距领域拥有专门知识。该奖学金的具体目标是：1)扩大申请者对非裔美国青少年种族歧视经验的了解；2)提高申请者在心理测量发展方面的技能；3)教育申请者进行高级量化分析。申请者将通过参与多学科课程工作、专业合作和指导以及研究会议和出版物来实现这些目标。这些活动将使申请者能够履行他的奖学金和论文研究目标，发展、验证和传播一种有经验的种族歧视措施，用于非裔美国青少年的日常、纵向药物使用和公共卫生研究。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): African Americans' experiences with racial discrimination have been implicated in several types of mental and physical health pathology during the adolescent period, including substance use, psychological symptoms, and externalizing behaviors. These problems not only disrupt normative developmental processes during adolescence, but also contribute to race-based health disparities in adulthood for African Americans. However, methodological problems related to measurement of the timing, context, and content of racial discrimination experiences substantially limit the ability to understand the role of racial discrimination in the daily lives and overall health of African American youth. In order to improve measurement and to promote synergy between theory and psychometric instrumentation, this grant will develop and validate a quantitative measure of experienced racial discrimination for use in longitudinal substance use and public health research with African American adolescents. This measure will improve the current state of racial discrimination research with African American adolescents by: 1) utilizing daily diary measurement to minimize retrospective bias; 2) including an array of contexts common in the lives of African American adolescents (e.g., school, internet, athletics); and 3) incorporating a mixed-method approach to validating the content of the measure. In this way, the proposed research project will take an innovative multidimensional, comprehensive, and mixed-method approach to developing a daily measure of experienced racial discrimination for use with African American adolescents. The ultimate goal of the current research and training fellowship application is to prepare the applicant to become an independent researcher with expertise in the field of experienced racial discrimination and health disparities for African American youth. The specific goals of this fellowship are: 1) to expand the applicant's knowledge of the experience of racial discrimination for African American adolescents; 2) to increase the applicant's skills in psychometric measure development; and 3) to educate the applicant in advanced quantitative analysis. The applicant will achieve these goals by engaging in multidisciplinary coursework, professional collaboration and mentorship, and research conferences and publications. These activities will enable the applicant to execute his fellowship and dissertation research aims of developing, validating, and disseminating a measure of experienced racial discrimination for use in daily, longitudinal substance use and public health research with African American adolescents.