The principal investigator's long-term goal is to predict type and frequency of health-promoting behaviors according to level of racial identity. A second related goal is to develop a program of research in the area of health-promoting behaviors and African-Americans. The outcome of this goal will be to capture the heterogeneity among African-Americans as evidenced by reference group orientation and to make predictions about subsequent health behaviors. To begin this process, reliable and valid instruments are needed to measure health-promoting behaviors and racial identity in the African-American population. Although a few instruments exist for measuring health-promoting behaviors and racial identity, these have been developed for and tested with non-African-American populations. This award will allow me the time and resources needed to complete a thorough testing of the instruments in consultation with and under the guidance of several scholars from different disciplines. The initial phase of this study will consist of focus group sessions designed to explore the health-promoting behaviors and racial identity developmental process of African-Americans located in the southeastern region of the United States. The end result of these focus group sessions will be the generation of items for two instruments that will be analyzed extensively for reliability and validity. After the first year of research, the second year will be devoted to examining convergent and discriminant validity of the instruments. Year three will involve using the developed instruments in testing the two constructs in a health behaviors model using structural equation modeling procedures.
| Johnson, Rolanda L (2002) Racial identity from an African Amercian perspective. J Cult Divers 9:73-8 |
