Date of Award

2016

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Psychology

Abstract

Given that Latino adolescents endorse more negative mood when compared to their counterparts of other backgrounds (CDC, 2012), it is especially advantageous to evaluate the impact of risk and resilience factors on mood among this population. The current study uses daily diary methodology to examine the impact that daily economic stress, daily family stress, familism, and ethnic identity commitment and exploration have on daily ratings of mood among 58 (M =13.31, 47% female) low-income Latino adolescents. Results show that daily family stress was strongly linked to daily mood while familism emerged as a salient resilience factor. Contrary to predictions, ethnic identity commitment appeared to be detrimental for youth; furthermore, ethnic identity exploration was found to exacerbate the effect of high economic stress. Context plays an important role in the impact of ethnic identity on mental health and efforts to promote familism and ethnic identity while reducing contextual stressors are necessary.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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