U.S. Latinos experience constrained access to formal health care resources, contributing to higher incidence of preventable diseases and chronic health conditions than the general population. The authors explore whether a rich set of informal health communication connections--to friends, family, radio, television, Internet, newspapers, magazines,…

Reliability and validity evidence is provided for the Demographic Index of Cultural Exposure (DICE), consisting of six demographic proxy indicators of acculturation, within two community samples of Mexican-origin adults (N= 497 for each sample). Factor analytic procedures were used to examine the common variance shared between the six demographic…

Latina college students are one of the fastest-growing segments of the college student population. Although there is evidence suggesting Latina high school students are at increased risk of engaging in suicidal behavior, it is unclear Bwhether this risk continues in college. Over the course of 3 years, 554 Latina college students, the majority of…

Social support is protective for a variety of health outcomes, and individuals living outside their country of origin ("sojourners") might use social support in distinctive ways. The authors performed a confirmatory factor analysis of the 18-item Index of Sojourner Social Support (ISSS) using data obtained from 190 Spanish-speaking immigrant…

This case study examines the autobiographical writing and interviews of Lupe, an Indigenous Mexican immigrant, at multiple times in her life. The case study is contextualized within social, historical, psychological, and institutional spaces both in the United States and in Mexico. Consequently, Lupe's journey is an example of how stigmatization…

Drawing from role theory, this study sought to explore the effects of assuming a new role on Latina community health workers (CHW) participating in a cervical cancer prevention program in a new Latino immigrant community located on the East Coast of the United States. Through a series of in-depth, Spanish language interviews with the 4…

Family cohesion has shown to be associated with lower psychological distress and other risk behaviors for Latinos, but little is known about the relationship of family cohesion, family discord, and anxiety disorders. Using data from the National Latino and Asian American Study (n = 2,554), this study examines the relationship between family…

In this study, we investigate individual-level language shift in a population of Mexican origin Latinos/as aged 65 and up. By using data from the Hispanic Established Populations for the Epidemiologic Study of the Elderly, we investigate their English language use as the dependent variable in a hierarchical linear model. The microlevel independent…

In an effort to better understand possible pathways that lead to a relatively high incidence of depressive symptoms among Mexican American youth, an interpersonal stress model of depression was tested using a community sample of 674 Mexican American mothers and their 5th grade children. Structural equation analyses revealed that maternal…

This study explored dimensions of a social phenomenon not often investigated among Mexican American college students, namely sexual harassment. Mexican American (n = 261) and non-Hispanic White female students (n = 111) from three southwestern universities responded to scales assessing experiences of sexually harassing behaviors, harassment…

Measurement of race and ethnicity is integral to assessing and addressing health disparities experienced by minorities. However, the unique experiences of Latinos related to race and the discordance between understandings of race among Latinos and the predominant U.S. conceptualizations of this construct impact how Latinos respond to measurement…

Parental involvement in children's schooling is an important component of children's early school success. Few studies have examined this construct exclusively among Latino families. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS-K), the present investigation (N = 2,051) explored relations between Latino parents' home and school…

Present conceptualizations and measures of self-esteem do not account for linguistic self-esteem, an aspect of the self specifically relevant for bilingual students. This study examines the utility of a newly developed measure of linguistic self-esteem. This novel measure is compared with a commonly used self-esteem measure, two standardized…

The current concept and measures of self-efficacy for depression in adolescents do not consider developmental and cultural aspects essential to understand and assess this construct in Latino youth. We examined the factor structure of the "Escala de Autoeficacia para la Depresion en Adolescentes" (EADA), a Spanish instrument designed to assess this…

Home-based parental involvement practices (i.e., educational encouragement, monitoring, and support) and their impact on students' academic persistence were investigated with a sample of 137, ninth-grade Latino students in a northeast high school. Structural Equation Modeling results indicate that the relationship between home-based parental…