The candidate is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The support provided through this award will provide the candidate with the training and research opportunities to allow her to achieve her career objective of becoming a clinical researcher in adolescent problem behavior among ethnic minority families. The candidate's career development and research objectives across the five years of the award include: 1) broadening her knowledge and clinical research skills in the area of adolescent problem behavior among ethnic minority families; and 2) examining the role of family functioning in the development of adolescent delinquency, gang involvement, and substance use. Other proposed career development activities include developing skills in statistical methods for the analysis of longitudinal data, enhancing knowledge and skills in the responsible conduct of research and project management, and supervised experiences in grant and manuscript preparation. The candidate's sponsor is a leading expert in clinical research on behavior problems. The candidate's mentors and consultants are local and national experts in the areas of adolescent problem behavior, assessment and treatment of ethnic minority families, and longitudinal data analyses. The goal of the candidate's research plan is to study the role of family and peer relationships in the etiology of adolescent problem behavior in normative samples of ethnic minority families. The research plan consists of two studies. The primary aim of Study 1, which utilizes existing data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, is to examine ethnic differences in family functioning and the role of ethnicity as a moderator between family functioning and adolescent problem behavior. The primary aim of Study 2, an independent study consisting of repeated measurements of African American adolescents and their families, is to examine the ethnic differences in the relationship between changes in family functioning and changes in adolescent behavior.
