“We’re All Equal” But Not Really: Perceptions of Racial Inequity Among Racial-Ethnic Minoritized Youth in the U.S

2021 ◽  
pp. 074355842110621
Author(s):  
Lisa Kiang ◽  
Michelle Y. Martin Romero ◽  
Stephanie I. Coard ◽  
Laura G. Gonzalez ◽  
Gabriela L. Stein

Racial-ethnic inequity is deeply entrenched in U.S. social systems, yet adolescents’ voices and understanding around inequity are not often directly examined. The current qualitative study uses focus group data from African American ( n = 21), Chinese- ( n = 17), Indian- ( n = 13), and Mexican- ( n = 17) origin adolescents ( Mage = 12.93 years; SD = 1.23; 51% boys) to provide insight on how youth navigate their attitudes and beliefs about these issues. Using a racial-ethnic socialization lens, we explore proximal (e.g., parents, peers, teachers) and distal (e.g., media, society) ways in which adolescents come to understand racial-ethnic inequity. Three themes characterized adolescents’ discussions. School diversity, of peers and of thought, and messages around egalitarianism were two prominent influences on their perceptions. A third theme related to perceptions of social hierarchies, which appeared to be shaped by stereotypes, peer interactions, and ideas about inequity itself. Emergent themes suggest that the school context is a particularly salient social setting that encompasses multiple sources of socialization (e.g., teachers, classmates, academics, climate), and parents, peers, and the media also play prominent roles.

2009 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brigida Hernandez

The Disability and Employment Survey (DES) was constructed to assess concerns that may be experienced by people with disabilities when seeking employment, with attention paid to the concerns of racial and ethnic minorities. Consisting of 32 items, the development of the DES was informed by focus group data from a culturally-diverse sample. When reviewed by a team of disability researchers, service providers, attorneys, and advocates, the DES demonstrated adequate face validity. Reliability analysis with 279 adults with disabilities resulted in a Cronbach's alpha of .91. Principal-components factor analysis indicated that the DES is comprised primarily offour factors: (a) Job Readiness Concerns, (b) Language Concerns, (c) Environmental Concerns, and (d) Health, Financial, and Familial Concerns, with these factors accounting for 49.8% of the total variance. Employment concerns varied by participants' race/ethnicity, academic attainment, current employment status, prior work history, and monetary beneficiary status.


2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 480-496 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian Cherney ◽  
Kristina Murphy

The suspect community thesis has been used to explain how and why Muslims have become a stigmatised minority, subject to increased state surveillance and public discourse that constructs Muslims as a potential terrorist threat. Breen-Smyth (2014) argues that a suspect community is generated through national or state security policies and reproduced and reinforced by societal responses and social practices. This influences how Muslims perceive themselves as a suspect community and influences their support for counter-terrorism efforts. This paper will explore the ‘experiential consequences’ of Muslims being stigmatised and labelled as a suspect community and the perceptions this has generated among Muslims living in Australia. We examine how Muslims have reacted to being defined as a terrorist threat and the coping mechanisms they adopt to defend their religious beliefs given Islam is seen by authorities, the media and the public as justifying violence. This paper will explore these issues by reporting results from focus group data collected from Muslims living in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne ( N = 104 participants in total). Results illustrate how being defined as a suspect community influences the appraisals Muslims have of themselves, their faith, their community and Australian authorities. Implications for counter-terrorism policies are also identified.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 205630512110088
Author(s):  
Benjamin N. Jacobsen ◽  
David Beer

As social media platforms have developed over the past decade, they are no longer simply sites for interactions and networked sociality; they also now facilitate backwards glances to previous times, moments, and events. Users’ past content is turned into definable objects that can be scored, rated, and resurfaced as “memories.” There is, then, a need to understand how metrics have come to shape digital and social media memory practices, and how the relationship between memory, data, and metrics can be further understood. This article seeks to outline some of the relations between social media, metrics, and memory. It examines how metrics shape remembrance of the past within social media. Drawing on qualitative interviews as well as focus group data, the article examines the ways in which metrics are implicated in memory making and memory practices. This article explores the effect of social media “likes” on people’s memory attachments and emotional associations with the past. The article then examines how memory features incentivize users to keep remembering through accumulation. It also examines how numerating engagements leads to a sense of competition in how the digital past is approached and experienced. Finally, the article explores the tensions that arise in quantifying people’s engagements with their memories. This article proposes the notion of quantified nostalgia in order to examine how metrics are variously performative in memory making, and how regimes of ordinary measures can figure in the engagement and reconstruction of the digital past in multiple ways.


AERA Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 233285842110336
Author(s):  
Mandy Savitz-Romer ◽  
Heather T. Rowan-Kenyon ◽  
Tara P. Nicola ◽  
Emily Alexander ◽  
Stephanie Carroll

The unprecedented arrival of COVID-19 upended the lives of American children with rapid shifts to remote and hybrid schooling and reduced access to school-based support. Growing concerns about threats to students’ mental health and decreased numbers of students transitioning to postsecondary education suggest access to school counselors is needed more than ever. Although previous research on school counselors finds they promote positive postsecondary, social emotional, and academic outcomes for students, further studies highlight the organizational constraints, such as an overemphasis on administrative duties and unclear role expectations, that hinder their work. Drawing on survey and focus group data, our mixed methods study documents school counselors’ experiences during the COVID-19 crisis, including the opportunities and constraints facing their practice. Findings suggest there should be a concerted effort to reduce the role ambiguity and conflict in counselors’ roles so they are better able to meet students’ increased needs.


Author(s):  
Ellen J. Bass ◽  
Andrew J. Abbate ◽  
Yaman Noaiseh ◽  
Rose Ann DiMaria-Ghalili

There is a need to support patients with monitoring liquid intake. This work addresses development of requirements for real-time and historical displays and reports with respect to fluid consumption as well as alerts based on critical clinical thresholds. We conducted focus groups with registered nurses and registered dietitians in order to identify the information needs and alerting criteria to support fluid consumption measurement. This paper presents results of the focus group data analysis and the related requirements resulting from the analysis.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 2333794X2110282
Author(s):  
Osayame Austine Ekhaguere ◽  
Rosena Olubanke Oluwafemi ◽  
Angela Oyo-Ita ◽  
Burke Mamlin ◽  
Paul Bondich ◽  
...  

The wait time clients spend during immunization clinic visits in low- and middle-income countries is a not well-understood reported barrier to vaccine completion. We used a prospective, observational design to document the total time from client arrival-to-discharge and all sequential provider-client activities in 1 urban, semi-urban, and rural immunization clinic in Nigeria. We also conducted caregiver and provider focus group discussions to identify perceived determinants of long clinic wait times. Our findings show that the time from arrival-to-discharge varied significantly by the clinic and ranged between 57 and 235 minutes, as did arrival-to-all providers-client activities. Focus group data attributed workflow delays to clinic staff waiting for a critical mass of clients to arrive for their immunization appointment before starting the essential health education talk or opening specific vaccine vials. Additionally, respondents indicated that complex documentation processes caused system delays. Research on clinic workflow transformation and simplification of immunization documentation is needed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabelle Celentano ◽  
Rachel L. Winer ◽  
Sou Hyun Jang ◽  
Anisa Ibrahim ◽  
Farah Bille Mohamed ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine uptake is low among East African adolescents in the US. Adolescents’ preferences influence HPV vaccine decisions, yet few interventions exist that address East African adolescents’ beliefs about HPV vaccines. We describe a multi-step process on how to create a theory-based comic book by integrating empirical findings, theory and focus group data from East African parents in the US. Methods Our multi-methods process included conducting focus groups with Somali, Ethiopian, and Eritrean mothers (n = 30) to understand mothers and adolescents socio-cultural beliefs and information needs about the HPV vaccine, creating comic book messages integrating the focus group findings, and assessing the acceptability of the finalized comic book among Somali, Ethiopian, and Eritrean adolescents (n = 134). Results We identified categories around socio-cultural beliefs (such ethnic representation and concerns about pork gelatin in vaccines), HPV vaccine information needs, and diffusion of information. We then mapped the categories to theoretical constructs and operationalized them into the comic book. Finally, we describe the overall acceptability of the comic book and specifics on comic book structure, appeal of characters, and message relevance. Conclusions A rigorous multi-step process that integrates theory and focus group data can help create culturally appropriate health messages that can educate and appeal to the community.


Nutrients ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 3028
Author(s):  
Patrick McHugh ◽  
Morgen Smith ◽  
Nicholas Wright ◽  
Sarah Bush ◽  
Sue Pullon

Despite an ever-increasing burden of non-communicable diseases and overwhelming evidence that good nutrition improves outcomes it is difficult to know whether this evidence is reaching the general population. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether health professionals in Tairāwhiti have sufficient nutrition education for their roles in health education and promotion and whether nutrition beliefs held by health professionals were consistent with current literature. A particular interest was to enlist views on the harms, benefits, and possible barriers to following plant-based diets. A mixed-methods study involving health professionals completing a questionnaire and a subsequent focus group to collect data was used. Survey data were analysed using spreadsheet software, and thematic content analysis of focus group data was undertaken. Participants provided nutrition advice 2.4 times per day. Almost half of practitioners considered their nutrition knowledge to be inadequate, and most made poor use of references for provision of information. Plant-based diets were generally viewed as beneficial to health, improve quality of life, be filling, but were perceived as not as easy to follow. This study is in keeping with previous research that the health workforce would benefit from more formalised nutrition education and competencies to address common chronic disease.


2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-184
Author(s):  
Lorrin Ruihi Shortland ◽  
Terry Locke

This article reports on what happened when a Rumaki pūtaiao kaiako (Science) teacher at a New Zealand high school trialled the use of creative narratives with her Year-10 students as a way of developing their understanding of the human digestive system. These students were members of the school's Māori immersion unit, and creative narratives were in part utilised as a bridge between science discourse and the cultural knowledges these students brought to their learning. In this case study, students developed ‘Tomato Pip’ narratives through four versions, which told the story of a tomato pip travelling through the human digestive system. Word-count data based on these versions and from a summative test were analysed and correlations found between test scores and three categories of word-count total (total words, total science words and total discrete science words). A discourse analysis of one student's narratives identified two distinct voices in these texts: the personal narrator and the emerging biologist. Questionnaire and focus-group data indicated that the use of creative narratives was both motivational to these students and effective as a bridge into science discourse mastery. It is argued that the findings have implications for disciplinary literacy theory, Indigenous education and science instruction.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Powlen ◽  
Kelly W. Jones ◽  
Elva Ivonne Bustamante Moreno ◽  
Maira Abigail Ortíz Cordero ◽  
Jennifer N. Solomon ◽  
...  

Protected areas (PAs) are under immense pressure to safeguard much of the world’s remaining biodiversity and can be strained by unpredicted events such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Understanding the extent of the pandemic on PA inputs, mechanisms, and conservation outcomes is critical for recovery and future planning to buffer against these types of events. We use survey and focus group data to quantify the impact of the pandemic on Mexico’s PA network and outline the pathways that led to conservation outcomes. On average, across 62 PAs, we find substantial changes in management capacity, monitoring, and tourism, and a slight increase in non-compliant activities. Our findings highlight the need to increase short-term relief efforts and long-term livelihood diversification initiatives for communities dependent on tourism, who were most vulnerable during the pandemic. Increased management support, including technical capacity and financial resources, could also better sustain management activities in future shocks.


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