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Noni K. Gaylord-Harden
Northwestern University
Maryse H. Richards
Brian L. Ragsdale
Walden University
This study assessed the unique effects of racial identity and self-esteem on 259 African American adolescents
depressive and anxiety symptoms as they transitioned from the 7th to 8th grades (ages 1214). Racial identity
and self-esteem were strongly correlated with each other for males but not for females. For both males and
females, an increase in racial identity over the 1 year was associated with a decrease in the prevalence of
depressive symptoms over the same period, even with self-esteem controlled. It was concluded that racial
identity may be as important as self-esteem to the mental health of African American adolescents, and it
explains variance in their mental health not associated with feelings of oneself as an individual.
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& Smith, 1997; Vandiver, Cross, Worrell, & FhagenSmith, 2002). The nature of African Americans
racial identity development during adolescence is
even less clear than self-esteem development
because very few studies have assessed changes in
racial identity during this period. However, there
are two related perspectives on African American
racial identity development that guide most
research in the area.
The cognitive development perspective suggests
that racial identity is developed as one becomes
cognitively able to make sense of the multitude of
social messages about race they encounter (Murray
& Mandara, 2001; Wardle, 1992). Children in the
early stages of cognitive development can identify
racial symbols such as skin color and even have
rudimentary understandings that such symbols are
associated with social currency, but they do not
have complex ideas about their own racial identity.
The cognitive perspective further suggests that as
children mature into early adolescence (i.e., ages
1014), they begin to process societal messages
about preferences for certain phenotypic features,
race-based hierarchies in wealth and academic
tracks, and the plethora of racial stereotypes they
will encounter (Murray & Mandara, 2001; Spencer,
1982, 1984). These messages are either challenged
or reinforced by parents racial socialization strategies, peers, teachers, and media. Thus, as Murray
and Mandara (2001) argue, ones cognitive readiness determines when they are capable of developing a more sophisticated notion of racial identity,
but the social context determines the form of racial
identity they will develop.
A second set of theories propose stage or status
models of racial identity development similar to
Eriksons (1968) stages of identity development,
although they have a few different assumptions
(e.g., Cross, 1991; Helms, 2007; Phinney, 1989).
These models suggest that one is in the first stage
when parental and societal beliefs about ones race
and racial identity are accepted without critical
reflection. African American parents can raise their
children to have positive racial pride, but this period is usually described as a time of uncritically
accepting negative stereotypes and beliefs about
African Americans (Phinney, 1989). This initial
stage is usually followed by some period of exploration, where individuals question their earlier,
usually negative views and assumptions about
African Americans. The exploration, or immersion
stage in Crosss (1991) model, is characterized by a
great desire to learn about ones heritage and connect with members of their group. Individuals tend
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Method
Participants
Participants included 100 male (39%) and 159
female (61%) sixth-grade African American students from six public schools in Chicago. Of the
519 asked to participate, 301 (58%) agreed to participate in the first wave. Of the 301 participants in
the sixth grade, 259 of the youth were able to be
located in either the seventh or eighth grades. The
nonretained youth were similar to the retained
youth in terms of annual household income
(p = .92), depressive symptoms (p = .43), anxiety
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symptoms (p = .46), and self-esteem (p = .96) during the sixth grade. Because racial identity was not
assessed in the sixth grade, this study only
included data from the seventh- and eighth-grade
waves. The students had a mean age of 12.55
(SD = 0.69) in the seventh grade. The youth were
primarily from low-income households with a median family income between $10,000 and $20,000.
Most parents (83%) had at least a high school
degree, with 10% reporting a college or graduate or
professional degree.
Procedure
Letters and a short demographics survey were
sent home asking parents for their consent to allow
their early adolescent to participate in a multiyear
study. Parents and students were informed that
students would receive prizes such as gift certificates, sports equipment, and games at the end of
each data collection. Each student returned to their
school the completed demographics survey and
signed consent form in a sealed envelope. Researchers went to each school everyday for 1 week to
administer surveys in small groups. All the participating students in each school were assessed by the
end of the week. One year later, when participants
were in the eighth grade, they were invited to again
participate in the study and the same procedure
was repeated.
Measures
Depressive symptoms. Participants completed the
27-item Childrens Depression Inventory (CDI;
Kovacs, 1985), a self-report instrument on which
youth rated their level of depressive symptoms for
the 2 weeks prior to administration on a scale from
1 (I am sad once in a while) to 3 (I am sad all the time).
The widely used CDI was chosen because of its
ease of use and excellent psychometric properties
in multiracial samples of early adolescents (Kovacs,
1985). The seventh- and eighth-grade Cronbachs
alphas for the current sample were .84 and .80,
respectively.
Anxiety symptoms. The trait subscale of the StateTrait Anxiety Inventory for Children (STAIC;
Spielberger, Edwards, Montuori, & Lushene, 1973)
was used to assess anxiety symptoms. The STAIC
is a 20-item measure on which youth rate the frequency of anxiety symptoms on a scale from 1
(hardly ever) to 3 (often). Example items include, I
worry about school and I get a funny feeling
in my stomach. The instrument was used in the
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Figure 1. Latent variable growth model illustrating the paths to test the effects of baseline and changes in racial identity and selfesteem on changes in mental health.
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ilar in both groups. The facility also computes critical ratio tests for each parameter in both samples
(Arbuckle, 2003).
Before any formal analyses, missing data were
analyzed. To be included in the study, participants
had to have data at one of the two time points for
each variable. This resulted in a maximum sample
of 259 adolescents. The percentages missing for
each variable are presented in Table 1. Overall,
16.9% and 16.7% of data points were missing for
males and females, respectively. The pattern of
missing was very similar for males and females as
well. Littles MCAR test showed that the data were
missing completely at random, v2(102) = 126.45,
p = .05. We therefore imputed missing data with
the expectation maximization (EM) algorithm. This
method replaces missing values with iterative maximum likelihood estimations based on the available
data. Schafer (1997) discusses more details of the
EM algorithm.
Results
Descriptive Statistics
The means, standard deviations, and zero-order
correlations by gender are presented in Table 1.
Contrary to our predictions, females racial identity
was not related to their self-esteem or anxiety symptoms. By modern effect size standards (Hemphill,
2003), racial identity had a small relation with girls
depressive symptoms in the seventh grade and a
moderate effect on depressive symptoms in the
Table 1
Means, Standard Deviations, and Zero-Order Correlations Among Study Variables in the Seventh and Eighth Grades
Variables (grade)
1. Racial identity (7)
2. Self-esteem (7)
3. Depression (7)
4. Anxiety (7)
5. Racial identity (8)
6. Self-esteem (8)
7. Depression (8)
8. Anxiety (8)
M
SD
Percent missing
.28**
).35**
.06
.56**
.27**
).32**
.13
3.30
0.67
21
.04
).16*
).24**
).09
).18*
.50**
.34**
.04
).19*
).08
).03
.81**
).21**
).19*
.03
.03
).28**
.65**
.31**
).32**
).17*
.04
).23*
.44**
.59**
).15
).18*
.52**
).17
.04
.39**
.84**
).29**
).18
3.30
0.65
20
.54**
).44**
).23*
.63**
.38*
1.18
1.24
17
).21*
.03
.40**
.47**
10.99
7.79
23
.45**
).55**
).20*
3.44
0.52
6
).28**
).22*
3.29
0.68
17
.42***
1.08
1.02
10
10.33
7.59
18
Note. Females correlations are above the diagonal (n = 159) and males correlations are below (n = 100). Values in parentheses
represent seventh- and eighth-grade assessments. Means, standard deviations, and percent missing are for the total sample.
*p < .05. **p < .01.
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Figure 2. Latent variable growth model illustrating the effects of baseline and changes in racial identity and self-esteem on changes in
depressive symptoms for males, v2(1) = 3.25, p = .07, comparative fit index = 1.0, root mean square error of approximation = .15.
**p < .01.
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Figure 3. Latent variable growth model illustrating the effects of baseline and changes in racial identity and self-esteem on changes in
depressive symptoms for females, v2(1) = 0.35, p = .56, comparative fit index = 1.0, root mean square error of approximation = .00.
*p < .05. **p < .01.
Discussion
Prior research shows that higher levels of selfesteem and the racial esteem or pride component of
racial identity are related to lower levels of mental
health problems among African American adolescents. This study was designed to build on this
prior research and address some voids in the literature by assessing the unique effects of racial
identity and self-esteem on African American
adolescents depressive and anxiety symptoms as
they transitioned between the seventh and eighth
grades. The results tended to support the general
theme of prior research, but several distinctive findings also emerged.
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Figure 4. Latent variable growth model illustrating the effects of baseline and changes in racial identity and self-esteem on changes in
anxiety symptoms for males, v2(1) = 3.04, p = .17, comparative fit index = .99, root mean square error of approximation = .14.
**p < .01.
Figure 5. Latent variable growth model illustrating the effects of baseline and changes in racial identity and self-esteem on changes in
anxiety symptoms for females, v2(2) = 3.60, p = .17, comparative fit index = 1.0, root mean square error of approximation = .06.
*p < .05. **p < .01.
decreases in the prevalence of depressive symptoms over the same period. Those adolescents who
increased their prideful feelings of African Americans as they transitioned from the seventh to the
eighth grades also experienced a relatively large
decrease in depressive symptoms over the same
period. This finding held up even with baseline
self-esteem and changes in self-esteem accounted
for. This was the same pattern of results for the
males and females. Given the cross-sectional and
the change model findings, it seems clear that the
pride young African American adolescents have in
their racial group is an important correlate of their
current depressive symptoms and changes in
depressive symptoms beyond their general feelings
of personal esteem. The better they feel about their
racial group, the less depressive symptoms they
seem to experience.
Unlike the results with depressive symptoms,
racial identity did not have the same clear effects
on anxiety symptoms. Racial identity in the seventh
or eighth grades did not correlate with anxiety
symptoms in the same year. This is consistent with
most previous studies that have found that racial
identity does not correlate with anxiety symptoms
(e.g., Arroyo & Zigler, 1995; Caldwell et al., 2002).
McMahon and Watts (2002) also found that racial
identity did not correlate with anxiety symptoms,
but it did with depressive symptoms. However, we
did find that increases in racial identity were correlated with reductions in anxiety symptoms for girls.
Although the relation was not as strong as it was
for depressive symptoms, the effect was significant
and important. The effect size was the same for
boys, but it was not significant for them. Therefore,
changes in racial identity may have a unique effect
on changes in anxiety symptoms, but the overall
relation between racial identity and anxiety symptoms is not very strong.
One plausible reason for the differences between
the depressive and anxiety symptoms findings is
that racial identity, self-esteem, and depressive
symptoms share an affective component. For
instance, each measure assesses the degree to which
one feels positive about themselves, their racial
group, or their emotional experiences. This affective
component is less prevalent among anxiety symptoms, which tend to be more focused on physical
symptoms and fears (Spielberger et al., 1973). This
may explain why racial identity did not account for
as much variance in anxiety symptoms as it did
with depressive symptoms. Future studies may
find that other components of racial identity
account for variance in anxiety symptoms not
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