Kristia A. Wantchekon

The COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 racial awakening posed challenges to adolescents’ academic functioning. Culturally relevant school supports are one potential source of resilience in the dual pandemic. This study examined whether heterogeneous culturally relevant school support profiles buffered declining grade point average (GPA) trajectories from 2019 to 2021 among sixth- and ninth-grade students in the U.S. Southwest (N = 717; Mage = 13.7; 49.9% girls; 31.8% Hispanic/Latinx, 31.5% Multiethnic, 25.7% White, 11.1% Black/African American, Asian American, American Indian, or AMENA). Ninth-grade students experiencing high general, moderate cultural, & critical support or low general, devoid cultural, & critical support had significantly better GPA trajectories than those experiencing moderate general & cultural, devoid critical support. Among sixth-grade students, no differences emerged. Discussion of these complex patterns focuses on implications for academic resilience after the dual pandemic.

Adolescents' ethnic-racial identity, including their beliefs about their ethnic-racial group, are shaped by their social contexts. One important ethnic-racial identity belief is public regard, which reflects adolescents' perceptions of their ethnic-racial group's social standing; however, limited research explores how school-based forces inform ethnoracially minoritized adolescents' public regard. Accordingly, the present study examined the interrelations among school discrimination, school belonging, and public regard over the course of a school year among Black, Asian American, and Latine adolescents (n = 2,060; M_age = 15.91, 46% boys, 54% girls or another gender). Findings suggested that across the three ethnic-racial groups, higher beginning-of-year school belonging was associated with higher public regard over the course of the school year, whereas higher beginning-of-year school discrimination was associated with lower public regard over the course of the school year. Drawing on an ecological systems framing, we also explored whether these relations were bidirectional, and we found that higher beginning-of-year public regard was associated with higher school belonging over the course of the school year, but beginning-of-year public regard was not associated with later reports of school discrimination. We did not find differences in the strength or significance of any of these relations across ethnic-racial groups. Our findings highlight the important role of school contextual factors in the evolving ethnic-racial identity beliefs of adolescents from ethnoracially minoritized backgrounds. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Understanding how ethnicity and race shape individuals' everyday experiences in context is critical for advancing scientific rigor and addressing ethnic-racial inequities. Daily process studies (e.g., experience-sampling method, ecological momentary assessment, daily diary methods) offer unique utility for studying ethnic-racial discrimination (ERD), ethnic-racial identity, and ethnic-racial out-group contact. The goals of this systematic review were to (a) summarize novel contributions of research using daily process designs to understand these ethnic-racial-related processes in everyday life, and (b) inform avenues for future research directions using daily process approaches to understand everyday ethnic-racial experiences and their implications for health and well-being. We identified a total of 97 studies from 77 unique study samples that used daily process approaches to measure ERD (52 studies), ethnic-racial identity (33 studies), and ethnic-racial out-group contact (22 studies). Novel contributions of daily process studies include enhancing external validity by centering individuals' everyday experiences as they go about typical life routines; using time-lagged approaches to test directionality of effects; and identifying within-person variability as a function of social context, individual differences, and time interval. Our recommendations for advancing integrative daily process studies of ethnic-racial experiences and identity are to include measures of multiple ethnic-racial-related constructs to understand their interrelations and interactions and broaden the representation of study samples in this research (e.g., ethnic-racial backgrounds, developmental periods, regional contexts). Despite limitations (e.g., missing data), daily process approaches offer considerable promise for advancing research on the dynamics and consequences of ERD, identity, and out-group contact in context. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Ethnic‐racial identity (ERI) development reflects the processes through which adolescents learn about their ethnic‐racial background (i.e., exploration) and develop clarity about what it means to them (i.e., resolution). Research on ERI has been critiqued for not examining connections between ERI and broader social beliefs, such as critical consciousness (i.e., individuals' level of reflection about social oppression, motivation to take action against it, and the extent to which they take such action). When examining connections to ERI, research underscores the importance of considering individuals' patterns of exploration and resolution in tandem (i.e., ERI status) rather than analyzing them in isolation. Accordingly, the current study utilized latent profile analysis to examine how ERI status profiles were associated with dimensions of Latine adolescents' critical consciousness. Cross‐sectional data came from Latine adolescents ( n = 338, M _age = 16.30, SD: 1.11; 44% boys, 53% girls, 3% another gender) attending a U.S. southwestern high school. Findings revealed three ERI status profiles: Foreclosed ( n = 132; lower exploration and higher resolution), Diffuse ( n = 59; lower exploration and resolution), and Achieved ( n = 147; higher exploration and resolution). Profiles did not significantly differ in critical reflection. The Achieved profile reported the highest critical motivation, the Diffuse profile reported the lowest, and the Foreclosed profile fell between them. The Achieved profile reported higher critical action than the other two profiles, which did not significantly differ from one another. Findings suggest that among Latine adolescents, engaging in ERI development is connected to feeling more agency to change unjust systems and engaging in more action against such systems, but higher ERI development does not necessarily reflect deeper engagement in questioning those systems (i.e., critical reflection).

Ethnic-racial identity development is a key developmental task that contributes to positive youth outcomes across a variety of domains. Families play an integral role in adolescents’ ethnic-racial identity development through the ways they teach their children about their ethnic-racial backgrounds. Research supports that youth who report high levels of family ethnic-racial socialization concurrently report high levels of ethnic-racial identity centrality, a facet of youth’s ethnic-racial identity that shapes their self-concept and experiences. However, there is less research examining how ethnic-racial socialization and centrality relate to one another over time, limiting the field’s understanding of how youth’s centrality evolves as they are socialized and are active agents of their own development. This study analyzes the interrelations between cultural socialization, a form of family ethnic-racial socialization, and centrality over one year across three waves of data collection. Participants were 2153 Black and Latine high school students from the Southwest and Midwest U.S. (M_age = 15.91; SD_age = 1.17; 57% Black; 44% boys, 54% girls, 2% another gender). Results from multigroup cross-lagged panel modeling indicated that, across groups, higher cultural socialization was associated with a positive change in centrality, but not vice versa. Findings highlight how the family context supports the progressive development of youth’s emerging beliefs about their ethnic-racial identities.

Adolescents’ ethnic-racial identity (ERI) exploration, resolution, and affirmation inform their approach and avoidance attitudes toward intergroup contact, but the potential mechanisms through which this occurs have been underexplored. Given the evidence that adolescents with higher ERI exploration, resolution, and affirmation also report higher self-esteem, and self-esteem is theorized to facilitate openness to intergroup contact, the current study explored the role of self-esteem as a mediator of the relation between adolescents’ ERI and their intergroup contact attitudes. Participants were 4606 adolescents (M_age = 16.35, SD = 1.16; 37.5% White, 27.1% Black, 20.7% Latinx, 11.7% Asian American, 3% Native American) from the U.S. Southwest and Midwest. The three waves of data were collected between March 2017 and March 2018. Results from longitudinal multigroup path models indicated that across all ethnic-racial groups there were positive direct relations between Wave 1 (W1) ERI resolution and W2 self-esteem (7 months later). In turn, W2 self-esteem was positively related to W3 approach attitudes (12 months later) and negatively related to W3 avoidance attitudes. The relations between ERI resolution and both approach and avoidance attitudes were fully mediated by self-esteem across all ethnic-racial groups. Notably the baseline values (W1) of all mediation and outcome variables (W2, W3) were included, suggesting that ERI resolution at baseline predicted increases in self-esteem, which predicted subsequent increases in approach attitudes and decreases in avoidance attitudes. ERI exploration and affirmation were not significant predictors of later self-esteem or contact attitudes. These findings suggest that of the three dimensions of ERI examined, resolution is the primary driver of the increases in self-esteem that inform adolescents’ attitudes towards interaction with ethnic-racial outgroup members.

Black immigrants and their children represent a significant and growing share of the U.S. Black population; however, their experiences of their multifaceted identities are often collapsed into the experiences of multigenerational Black youth. The current study investigates whether generalized ethnic-racial identity measures are equivalent for Black youth with an immigrant parent and Black youth with only U.S.-born parents. Participants were 767 Black adolescents (16.6% immigrant-origin; M_age = 16.28, SD = 1.12) attending diverse high schools in two regions of the U.S. Participants completed the affirmation, exploration, and resolution subscales of the Ethnic Identity Scale-Brief (EIS-B), along with the centrality and public regard subscales of the Multidimensional Inventory of Black Identity-Teen (MIBI-T). The results indicated that, whereas the EIS-B demonstrated scalar invariance, the MIBI-T demonstrated partial scalar invariance. Accounting for measurement error, immigrant-origin youth reported lower affirmation than multigenerational U.S.-origin youth. Across groups, ethnic-racial identity exploration and resolution scores were positively associated with family ethnic socialization; ethnic-racial identity affirmation was positively associated with self-esteem; and ethnic-racial identity public regard was negatively associated with ethnic-racial discrimination, supporting convergent validity. Conversely, centrality was positively associated with discrimination among multigenerational U.S.-origin Black youth, but the relation was not significant among immigrant-origin Black youth. These results fill a methodological gap in the literature, providing researchers with empirical support for considering whether to pool immigrant-origin and multigenerational U.S.-origin Black youth in analyses regarding ethnic-racial identity.

Ethnic–racial identity (i.e., individuals’ beliefs about their ethnic–racial group membership and the processes through which they develop those beliefs) is a developmental competency that can promote adolescents’ adjustment; however, the extant literature has largely focused on how distinct dimensions of ethnic–racial identity are associated with adjustment (i.e., variable-centered approaches), potentially obscuring a more holistic understanding of this developmental competency. The current study utilized latent profile analysis, a person-centered approach, to examine profiles of ethnic–racial identity among Black (n = 325; M_age = 15.94, SD = 1.14) and Latinx (n = 370; M_age = 16.13, SD = 1.10) adolescents as well as links between profile membership and adjustment. Three ethnic–racial identity profiles emerged: Diffuse & Low Regard (n = 55; lower development, lower self-concept); Diffuse & High Regard (n = 160; lower development, higher self-concept); and Developed & Idealized (n = 477; higher development, higher self-concept). The profile highest in ethnic–racial identity across all indicators reported the highest levels of adjustment. The findings highlight the synergistic benefits of ethnic–racial identity development and positive self-concept for adolescents’ psychosocial and academic adjustment.