Research Problem Addressed
The objective of the researchers was to investigation the role that socioeconomic factors and gender play in the connection between racial segregation and the psychological adjustment of the affected individuals. The study tested the contributions of the two factors with the perspective that they would both be factors contributing to vulnerability as well as resilience of the affected study sample. The indicators of psychological adjustment that the researchers tested included interpersonal sensitivity, anxiety, and depressive symptoms.
Theory Tested
The research did not test any new theories. Instead, the researchers adopted the stress proliferation theory proposed by Pearlin (1989). Which suggests that the psychological effects associated with discrimination of any type are always higher among groups of people who belong to the low socioeconomic status. For this reason, the researchers hypothesized that the connection between psychological adjustment and racial discrimination would be more observable among young adults who belong to the low socio-economic backgrounds compared to other demographic groups (Neblett, Bernard, & Banks, 2016). Therefore, it would be plausible to suggest that the study appraised the validity of the stress proliferation theory in the explanation of psychological adjustment to discrimination among people from different socioeconomic status.
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Methods Used
The researchers adopted the qualitative methodology in which they used the longitudinal study design collecting data from two cohorts. They recruited 171 respondents from the African American racial group who were attending Southeastern University in the US. Sixty-nine percent of the respondents in the study were female while the rest were male aged between eighteen and nineteen years. The recruited respondents further belonged to different socioeconomic backgrounds. For instance seven percent of them belonged to the poor socioeconomic group, 19.9 percent to the working class, 49.7 percent to the middle class, 22.8 percent to the upper middle class, and 0.6 percent to the wealth group (Neblett, Bernard, & Banks, 2016). Data collection from the two cohorts was done using questionnaires that were prepared under rigorous methods that ensured their validity.
Results of the Study
The researchers find a correlation between racism and mental health status among the study respondents. In this case, they established that racism interacted with elements of socioeconomic status and gender in influencing mental health and psychological adjustment among the respondents. Specific results of the investigation in interpretation of the summarized ideas are that women and men are affected differently by the discrimination (Neblett, Bernard, & Banks, 2016). The authors suggest that men from lower socioeconomic status and women from the higher socioeconomic status are the most vulnerable groups to the negative effects of racial discrimination. The study found higher rates of mental health issues among this group of respondents than it did for the rest of the groups. The investigators concluded therefore, that socioeconomic status and gender is a significant predictor of psychological adjustment to instances of racial discrimination among Africa Americans.
Importance of the Findings
The researchers propose that their findings contributed to the existing wealth of information on the relationship between racial discrimination and psychological adjustment to such situations. For this reason, mental health practitioners, as the researchers posit, would use information from eth research to inform their cognitive behavioral therapy approaches to the management of psychological issues among young African American people as well as those from other minority groups who could be affected by racism in the same way as do the African Americans.
Strengths of the Research
The study design adopted by the researchers is the strongest point of the study. In this case, through the longitudinal design, it was possible for the researchers to control for many factors that would affect the validity of the findings (Neblett, Bernard, & Banks, 2016). For example, through ensuring that the respondents came from different socioeconomic classes, the study was able to control for psychological adjustment in relation to the socioeconomic variable. The findings of the study are also credible since the investigators used credible tools for data analysis to determine the relationship among the tested variables.
Weaknesses of the Research
It appears that the study was gender biased and that the researchers focused only on the income status of respondents to define the socioeconomic levels of respondents. One may argue that through ignoring the transgender and other types of social groups, the research did not have an adequate definition of socioeconomic factors. In addition, the research was limited to one university in the US, which is why it may be implausible to generalize the findings. The study sample size and the geographical limitation of the study, for example, do not allow one to argue that they findings are representative of the contribution of socioeconomic and gender variables to psychological adjustments to racism.
How Would the Study have been Improved?
The researcher should have included other factors within the socioeconomic component of the variables studied, including cultural factors, different racial backgrounds, gender balance, and other elements defining the social and economic spheres of life of people. In addition, the study would have resulted in more generalizable findings had the researchers collected data from a wider geographical region than they did (Kothari, 2004).
References
Kothari, C. R. (2004). Research methodology: Methods and techniques . New Age International.
Neblett Jr, E. W., Bernard, D. L., & Banks, K. H. (2016). The moderating roles of gender and socioeconomic status in the association between racial discrimination and psychological adjustment. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice , 23 (3), 385-397.
Pearlin, L. I. (1989). The sociological study of stress. Journal of health and social behavior , 241-256.
