Cultural Change, Mental Health & Academic Achievement

Eileen Anderson-Fye

What are the relationships between mental health and academic achievement for high school students undergoing rapid cultural change (i.e. immigration and globalization)? This project investigates the relationship between mental health and secondary school achievement among African-descended and Latino Belizean adolescents undergoing rapid cultural change in Los Angeles and in Belize to pilot measures and gather data that will subsequently be employed in a larger, longitudinal comparative project addressing this question. In the Los Angeles sample, survey and interview data collected over the past decade with African-descended Belizean students, their parents, and their educators will be re-analyzed to examine the correlations and self-report links between mental health and academic achievement outcomes. In the Belizean sample, culturally appropriate mental health measures will be piloted and correlated with academic achievement outcomes. Ethnographic and interview data from over a decade of longitudinal work in Belize will supplement these measures. The data from the two field sites will provide a strong foundation for a future, comprehensive prospective longitudinal study examining the effects of cultural models on developmental trajectories of mental health and high school academic achievement. These data will inform educational policy and practice regarding student well-being among the current wave of “new immigration.”

About Eileen Anderson-Fye

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