Ethnic-Racial Identity and Academic Adjustment among Adolescents: Examining the Role of Friendship Characteristics

The demographics of the U.S. are changing. By 2050, projections suggest that non-Hispanic Whites will no longer make up the majority of the population, and students of color should outnumber White students in schools by 2025. It is thus timely and necessary to examine youth’s ethnic-racial identity (ERI) development—the meaning individuals ascribe to their ethnic-racial groups and how they maintain this meaning over time—as it relates to their academic adjustment. Research has identified numerous associations between positive ERI beliefs and improved academic outcomes across diverse student populations. However, comparatively little research has explored how youth’s social contexts in school—such as their friendship groups and the characteristics thereof—may shape these associations. This represents a significant gap in our understanding of normative ERI development, and an opportunity to identify how social ties encourage positive identity development and educational success within our diversifying student population. In this work, I hypothesized that more diverse, more emotionally supportive, and less conflictual friend groups among ethnically-racially diverse high school students may encourage a more positive association between their ERI and academic adjustment. Drawing from frameworks such as ecological systems theory and social identity theory, I proposed three aims. First, I examined the extent to which adolescents’ ERI beliefs (i.e., centrality and public regard), friend group characteristics (i.e., ethnic-racial diversity and relationship quality), and academic adjustment outcomes (i.e., academic efficacy and school belonging) change over time. Second, I investigated whether observed changes in these constructs are related to one another over time. Third, I examined the extent to which adolescents’ initial ERI values, friend group characteristics, and their respective interactions predict changes in their academic adjustment. To explore these questions, I drew data from three waves of a longitudinal high school study. The analytic sample included an ethnically-racially diverse sample of 9th through 12th grade students in the Midwestern and Southwestern United States. Students completed quantitative surveys assessing their ERI centrality (the importance individuals place on their ethnicity-race) and public regard (how one perceives others to evaluate their ethnicity-race). They also reported on their academic adjustment perceptions. Finally, students provided high school friend nominations, which were subsequently used to assess aggregate friend group characteristics across individual students. Primary analyses included the completion and interpretation of multiple unconditional, conditional, and parallel latent growth curve models. These captured the initial values of variables at each time point, the slope values of their change over time, and the interrelation of that change across variables. Results indicated that ERI centrality and public regard positively related to students’ academic efficacy and school belonging perceptions. Similarly, friend group emotional support and conflict buffered against declines in academic adjustment change over time. In addition, significant moderation relations were found. Notably, students’ ERI and friend group characteristics interacted such that both academic efficacy and school belonging were at their highest among students reporting high public regard and high friend emotional support friend group conflict. The bulk of these findings held consistent across ethnic-racial groups, though notable nuances exist. This work concludes that youth’s school friend groups constitute a relevant context in ERI development among ethnically-racially diverse adolescents. Implications for the future of ERI research as it relates to encouraging strong and supportive friend groups in schools are discussed.PhDEducation & PsychologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/162976/1/mikemed_1.pd