It is known that experiences during the period of early adolescence have a critical impact on the development of mental health. Nevertheless, few scholars have examined the experiences of young adolescents of color and in particular, the experiences of young adolescents growing up in urban, low socioeconomic status communities. This project will describe the daily experience of African American and Latino children, and study the relationship between this experience and the psychological adjustment within each of these groups with a particular focus on how socioeconomic status places children at risk for developmental problems. This continuation project is a supplement to a study in which similar data were obtained from 483 5th to 9th grade Caucasians. Using the Experience Sampling Method (ESM), these middle to lower middle class white youth carried pagers for one week and reported on their immediate situations and internal states at the time of signals sent via the pagers. The data from these white middle-class young adolescents have yielded an extensive understanding of how their daily experience relates to their psychological adjustment. In the proposed study we expect to obtain reports on approximately 20,000 random moments in the lives of 200 African Americans and 200 Latinos from impoverished and working/middle class neighborhoods and 100 Caucasians from impoverished neighborhoods. The children will be distributed equally between 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th grades and by gender. To avoid difficulties with drug-related """"""""beeper"""""""" use, programmable watches will be substituted for the pagers. Multiple regression and structural equation analyses (LISREL) will address the following aims within each of the three ethnically diverse groups of youth: 1) To describe the daily lives of the young adolescents and 2) To evaluate whether young adolescent boys and girls from these different ethnic groups experience more dysphoria than pre-adolescents, 3) To ascertain if daily emotional experiences and daily hassles mediate the relationship between life events and mental health, with a focus on these relationships among low SES children, and 4) To evaluate whether time spent in supportive environments is related to more positive daily experience and better mental health. These findings will allow us to pinpoint what aspects of their daily experience place specific populations of young adolescents at risk for problem behavior and what aspects optimize healthy development.
