Race and School Contexts of Adolescent Social Relations

描述（由申请人提供）：非裔美国人结婚晚，更有可能永远不会结婚比非西班牙裔白人，因此高比例-超过三分之二-黑人儿童出生的未婚母亲。先前的研究表明，经济因素，特别是黑人男性的高失业率和低收入，解释了部分但不是全部的种族差距。其余的可能是由于我们尚未确定的社会因素。社会对关系形成的影响在青少年时期可能比在成年时期更容易衡量，因为青少年的生活受到家庭和学校的控制，而不是类似的机构控制成年人的生活。我们认为，在青少年时期，在成人关系的形成中，导致种族和民族差异的社会因素是显而易见的，但除了研究性行为外，很少有研究考察青少年与异性的社会关系。为了证明调查青少年社会经验的价值，我们将研究青少年与异性关系的特征与成年后关系形成之间的关联。 我们的主要目标是调查青少年与异性的关系是如何通过学校的机构和社会背景塑造的，使用来自全国青少年健康纵向调查（添加健康）和高中成绩单研究的数据，青少年健康和学业成就（AHAA）。我们区分青少年关系的两个方面，性活动和夫妻参与。夫妻参与涉及到一对夫妇在多大程度上向对方和他人展示自己作为一对夫妇。大多数先前的研究都集中在性活动上，但白色和黑人关系之间的一个关键区别可能是沿着夫妇维度以及青少年性关系伴随着夫妇认同的程度。我们将模拟学校的社会背景和青少年与异性关系的这两个维度之间的关联。学校的内部结构塑造了性关系和浪漫关系的规范性气候。我们通过观察其他学生的态度和行为来描述规范性气候。重要的是，而不是假设所有的学生共享相同的社会背景下，我们确定通过检查课程的行为和创建的措施，这些子组内的学生的态度和行为的特点分组。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): African Americans marry later and are more likely never to marry than Non-Hispanic whites, and consequently high proportions-over two-thirds-of black children are born to unmarried mothers. Prior research shows that economic factors, specifically high rates of unemployment and low earnings among black men, explain some, but not all, of this race gap. The remainder is probably due to social factors we have yet to identify. The social influences on relationship formation are likely easier to measure in adolescence than in adulthood, because adolescents' lives are more tightly controlled by the family and school than parallel institutions control adult lives. We expect that the social factors that contribute to race and ethnic differences in adult relationship formation are evident in adolescence, but few studies have examined adolescent social relationships with the opposite sex except to study sexual behavior. To demonstrate the value of investigating adolescent social experiences, we will examine the associations between the characteristics of adolescents' relationships with the opposite sex and relationship formation in adulthood. Our primary goal is to investigate how adolescent relationships with the opposite sex are shaped by the institutional and social context of schools, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and the high school transcript study, Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement (AHAA). We distinguish two dimensions of adolescent relationships, sexual activity and couple involvement. Couple involvement concerns the degree to which the pair presents themselves to each other and to others as a couple. Most prior research has focused on sexual activity, but a key difference between white and black relationships may be along the couple dimension and the degree to which adolescent sexual relationships are accompanied by couple identification. We will model the association between the social context of schools and these two dimensions of adolescent relationships with the opposite sex. The internal structure of schools shapes the normative climate for sexual and romantic relationships. We characterize the normative climate by observing the attitudes and behaviors of other students. Importantly, rather than assuming that all students share the same social context, we identify subgroups by examining course-taking behaviors and create measures that characterize the attitudes and behaviors of students within these subgroups.