Poster #68 - Youth Reflect on Social and Economic Inequalities: Associations Between Critical Reflection Skills and Adaptive Development

• In Event: 2-163 - Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Section - Diversity, Equity & Social Justice

Integrative Statement

Marginalized youth must be able to examine social and political inequalities that impede their adaptive development in order to overcome those barriers and exhibit thriving (Hershberg, et al., 2015). This ability, known as critical reflection, is associated with better career development in late adolescence and early adulthood for marginalized youth (Diemer & Blustein, 2005). Comparatively, critical reflection skills might be irrelevant for thriving among privileged youth because they do not face comparable structural barriers, however these skills could be useful in promoting allyship and solidarity (Watts et al., 2011).

Though dichotomizing privilege and marginalization allows researchers to clearly conceptualize critical reflection development, it also aggregates and overlooks important information about levels of privilege along different identity domains. For instance, a dichotomization of privilege and marginalization ignores the fact that different socialization processes may lead some marginalized groups to develop better critical reflection skills than other marginalized groups. Black youth might be especially likely to have higher critical reflection skills because of racial socialization processes (Thomas et al., 2014), whereas youth from lower socioeconomic backgrounds tend to have a poor understanding of income inequality, which may inhibit their critical reflection development (Flanagan et al., 2014).

This study builds on previous literature by assessing the measurement invariance of, and associations between, critical reflection and adaptive development among samples of Black and White youth living in different income-level environments. Data came from 515 students (Mage=13.38, SD 1.68; 46.47% female) enrolled in sixth through eighth grades in the Southeastern United States. We divided participants into three groups: White students from middle-income schools (N=112), White students from low-income schools (N=250), and Black students from low-income school (N=153). The sample of Black students from middle-income schools was not large enough for analytic purposes. Critical reflection of race and socioeconomic status were measured using items from the Critical Consciousness Scale (Diemer el at., 2017), and adaptive development was measured using a measure of the Five Cs of Positive Youth Development (Geldhof et al., 2014).

The initial three-group CFA exhibited acceptable fit (χ2 (df = 1293) = 1722.33, p<.001; RMSEA= .044 90% C.I. [.038, .049]; CFI= .933, TLI= .923), and subsequent models supported weak (Δ CFI = .005) and strong (Δ CFI = .008) invariance according to guidelines provided by Cheung and Rensvold (2002). Mean items scores and latent mean comparisons are presented in Table 1. Overall, Black youth from low-income schools had the highest critical reflection and White youth from low-income schools had the lowest critical reflection. Future work should therefore consider how to increase critical reflection skills among White youth, especially those living in low-income environments. Latent correlations between critical reflection and the Five Cs are presented in Table 2. Critical reflection skills were not associated with the Five Cs among Black youth from low-income schools but were negatively associated with the Five Cs among both groups of White youth. Future research should focus on identifying factors that might mitigate the negative associations between critical reflection and thriving during early adolescence.

Authors

• Corine Tyler, Oregon State University
  Presenting Author

• John Geldhof, Oregan State Unviversity
  Non-Presenting Author

• Katrina L Black, Clemson University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Edmond P. Bowers, Clemson University
  Non-Presenting Author