Theses and Dissertations from UMD

Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2

New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM

More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.

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2010 - 20122

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Author: search.filters.author.Barrett, Courtenay Anna

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    Latino Adolescent Sexual Behavior: Do Contextual Effects Contribute to Ethnic Group Differences?
    (2012) Barrett, Courtenay Anna; Gottfredson, Gary D.; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Latino youths are at a higher risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections or becoming pregnant during adolescence than their non-Latino peers. Research has focused mainly on individual sociopsychological predictors of adolescent sexual behavior or on contextual effects of neighborhoods. The present study investigates potential contributions of school effects to the explanation of ethnic group differences in sexual behavior. Data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) are examined to answer the following questions: (a) Are Latino adolescents concentrated in areas where there is a more sexually permissive school culture? (b) Are sexually permissive school cultures positively related to sexual initiation? (c) To what extent do school characteristics or sexual norms moderate the relationship between Latino self-identification and motivations to engage in sex through a person-environment interaction? (d) To what extent do school characteristics or sexual norms moderate the relationship between Latino self-identification and sexual initiation through a person-environment interaction? Results suggest that Latinos are not concentrated in areas with a more permissive sexual culture and that the higher the proportion of Latinos in the school, the lower the proportion of students having had sex. Latino ethnicity is not related to motivations to engage in sex, but is positively related to sexual initiation. This positive relationship is attenuated in schools where there is a sexually permissive school culture. Across ethnicities, sexually permissive school cultures increase sexual initiation.
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    Racial Congruence and Its Effects on Social Integration and School Involvement: A Multi-Level Model
    (2010) Barrett, Courtenay Anna; Gottredson, Gary D.; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Several initiatives have been taken in order to diversify schools and communities in advance of scientific research investigating the effects of racial diversity on students. The present study used data from 41,639 students across 87 schools to answer the following research question: To what extent do students with high levels of racial congruence feel more socially integrated and experience higher levels of school participation than similar students who are racially incongruent in their school environments? Racial congruence is defined as attending a school with a high percentage of peers of the same race as oneself. This secondary data analysis used a nested-model (students within school social environments) and found a cross-level interaction between an individual's race and the percentage of same-race peers for certain racial groups. Findings support previous literature concerning the attenuation of individual-level racial group differences in social integration when Asian American students are in racially congruent schools.