|
Society for Research on Adolescence (SRA) Biennial Meeting
April 12-14, 2018 Minneapolis, Minnesota Presentation Title: "Latino Adolescents’ Reasons for Organized Activity Participation: The Association to Cultural Orientations and Activity Types" (poster) Authors: Ting-Lan Ma (Edgewood College, Visiting Scholar), Sandra Simpkins Abstract A growing body of research has looked at Latino adolescents’ after school activity participation (Ettekel & Simpkins, 2017). The Ecological System Theory has suggested cultural orientations as the macrosystem factor that affects adolescent development (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998). Though cultural orientation has been found to be associated with the social cognition and reasons behind adolescent behaviors (Ma & Bellmore, 2016), it remains unanswered whether and how cultural values are tied with reasons behind Latino adolescents’ organized activity participation. This study used a sample of majority Latino and White adolescents to answer two research questions: (1) What dimensions can be found in adolescents’ reason of participating in organized activities? And (2) To what extent are cultural orientations (i.e., Anglo vs. Latino orientations) and organized activity types (e.g., sports) associated with dimensions of reasons behind adolescents’ activity participation. Participants were 299 adolescents (Girl = 53%) from four middle schools in the Southwest. The self-report ethnicity consists of the majority of Latino adolescents (64%) and white adolescents (36%). The measure included Reasons for Participating in Organized Activities, a scale of 20 items developed based on the focus groups of Latino adolescents (Simpkins, Delgado, Price, Quach & Starbuck, 2013); Acculturation Rating Scale for Mexican-American (Cuellar, Arnold & Maldonado, 1995) which included six items tapping Latino cultural orientation (alpha=.93) and six items tapping Anglo cultural orientation (alpha=.64). Activity types were assessed by adolescent’s self-identified organized activity, which were further categorized into four major types: Sports (e.g., basketball), Art (e.g., band), Leadership/Academic (e.g., student council), and community activities (e.g., youth group). The covariates included gender, ethnicity, and mother’s education level. Four dimensions of reasons for activity participation were extracted from Exploratory Factor Analysis: Individual-oriented reasons, family/school-oriented reasons, Adult-oriented reasons, and social-oriented reasons. We then applied confirmatory factor analysis to fit the four-factor model to the data (Table 1), which showed a good fit: (112, N = 240) = 200.64, p<.05, CFI=.92; TLI=.90; RMSEA=.057, 90% C.I.=.044~.070, p=.17. Multiple linear regression was conducted to examine if cultural orientation and activity types (i.e., sports) are predictive of different dimensions of reasons behind adolescent activity participation while controlling for gender, ethnicity, and mother’s education level. The results showed that, being a Latino versus white adolescents is positively predictive of individual-oriented reasons, family/school oriented reasons, and social-oriented reasons. In particular, adolescents adopting an Anglo-cultural orientation were more likely to report individual-oriented reasons whereas adolescents with a Latino–cultural orientation were more likely to report family/school oriented reasons. Organized activity types were also associated with dimensions of reasons behind participation. Adolescents who participated in sports were more likely to report family/school oriented reasons, adult-oriented reasons, and social-oriented reasons compared to adolescents participating in Art, and were more likely to report individual-oriented reasons compared to adolescents participated in leadership and academic type. In sum, Latino adolescents’ reasons for organized activity participation were associated with both the activity types and the degree to which they were oriented into Anglo versus Latino cultures. Comments are closed.
|
|
