UROP Project

Taking Despair Out of Disparity: Constructing Acculturation and Coping Typologies Among Latine Emerging Adults

acculturation, coping, alcohol use, health disparities, career research

Research Mentor: Jacob Perez, he/him/his
Department, College, Affiliation: Educational Psychology and Learning Systems, Education, Health, and Human Sciences
Contact Email: jacob.perez@med.fsu.edu
Research Assistant Supervisor (if different from mentor):
Research Assistant Supervisor Email:
Faculty Collaborators:
Faculty Collaborators Email:

Looking for Research Assistants: Yes
Number of Research Assistants: 2
Relevant Majors: Psychology, Public Health, Nursing, Behavioral Neuroscience, Sociology, or Human Development and Family Science; students from other majors with related interests will also be considered.
Project Location: On FSU Main Campus
Research Assistant Transportation Required: No, the project is remote
Remote or In-person: Partially Remote
Approximate Weekly Hours: 8, Flexible schedule (Combination of business and outside of business. TBD between student and research mentor.)
Roundtable Times and Zoom Link:

• Day: Thursday, September 3
  Start Time: 6:00
  End Time: 6:30
  Zoom Link: https://fsu.zoom.us/my/jacobperez
• Day: Friday, September 4
  Start Time: 5:30
  End Time: 6:00
  Zoom Link: https://fsu.zoom.us/my/jacobperez

Project Description

Family values inform how children develop coping behaviors as they age into emerging adulthood (ages 18–29), and among Latine Americans, familism is a prevalent cultural value, positioning the family as central to one’s decisions. As Latine families migrate and acculturate to the United States, they adopt varying degrees of American values, norms, and behaviors. Latine cultural expectations shape how people should cope with the distress that accompanies acculturation (e.g., family as a source of support), but this may create bicultural tension if this expectation contrasts with the host culture’s norms (e.g., American individualism). This bicultural tension, or acculturative stress, has been linked to disparities in alcohol use patterns and career development outcomes, and given that emerging adulthood is a period rife with alcohol use and career changes, it is necessary to intervene to mitigate detrimental outcomes among Latine emerging adults.

As Latine Americans face immigration-related stressors, they also demonstrate lower help-seeking behaviors than their White and non-immigrant peers, suggesting these outcomes are difficult for health professionals to intervene. Accessible treatment approaches, such as digital health interventions, may be adapted to bridge gaps in help-seeking behavior among treatment-hesitant groups, such as Latine Americans. Adapted interventions have shown promise for improving both health and career development outcomes above generic approaches. However, adapting interventions can be difficult when core processes for the population, like acculturation, may differ widely (e.g., depending on time since immigration, generational status, etc.). Not only do individuals differ in their acculturation patterns, but the pattern of their general coping behaviors (e.g., reliance upon one's "fate," family, community, and sense of unity with the broader population) may be linked with health and career-related outcomes.

Since it is difficult to develop a “one-size-fits-all” approach, this project uses a statistical approach called "latent profile analysis" to investigate whether the broader population of Latine American emerging adults, or people aged 18–29, demonstrate any distinct patterns (called profiles) that we cannot directly measure (hence the term latent). By using profiles, it is like a heuristic to show how several variables co-occur or contrast when we investigate people's health and career behaviors in the real world, and it is much easier to tweak and adapt an intervention for a few common profiles than it is to adapt for every possible combination of variables. Based on these latent profiles, I plan to predict differences in health and career-related outcomes that are tied to disparities in the Latine American emerging adults population.

Research Tasks: Tasks will include:
- Conducting literature reviews using research databases (PubMed, PSYCInfo, etc.), Scite.ai, and other tools
- Organizing literature in APA style (7th ed.) using citation managers like Zotero (zbib.org)
- Making a measures library (e.g., listing items for project scales, creating item labels for each (like ScaleAItem1, ScaleAItem2, etc.), noting how measures are scored, citing the sources for that information, and filling in templates of key information for each scale)
- Computing variables (e.g., adding cells for Items 1-10 for a scale to create a total score column in an Excel spreadsheet)

*Depending on additional funding pending for this project, you may also be responsible for conducting, transcribing, and/or coding qualitative data for participant interviews.

Skills that research assistant(s) may need: REQUIRED:
- Willingness to ask for help/clarity as needed
- Timeliness in communicating with the research mentor
- A vision for how research fits into their future professional goals
- A genuine interest in addressing population-level disparities
RECOMMENDED:
- Career goals in health service psychology or an allied mental health profession
- Completed or currently completing coursework in research methods (PSY 3213C), statistics, and/or psychology (e.g., PSY 2012)
- Savvy with technology; it is recommended that you are familiar with basic functions in Excel (e.g., =SUM, conditional formatting) and could apply these to compute total scores from a set of items.
- An understanding of both the benefits and pitfalls of AI use
- Experience with APA style writing or experience using a citation manager