Perceived Racial/Ethnic Miscategorization and Psychological Adjustment: The Roles of School Safety and School Ethnic Context

• In Event: Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Topic - Education, Schooling

Abstract

Research suggests that individuals who perceive others to miscategorize their race/ethnicity may experience psychological challenges, such as depression and low self-worth (Franco et. al, 2016; Nishina et. al, 2018). Less studied is the influence of contextual factors on experiences of racial/ethnic miscategorization in early adolescence, such as the diversity of the social context or the size of the group that youth perceive being mistaken for. We hypothesized that early adolescents who perceived being miscategorized as the largest racial/ethnic group in their grade would feel safer in school, which in turn would be associated with less social anxiety over time. Furthermore, we predicted that this indirect effect would be stronger for youth in less ethnically diverse schools.

Method. Participants were drawn from a large longitudinal study of adolescent development in 26 ethnically diverse California middle schools. The analytic sample includes 425 sixth graders (53.5% female) who reported a discrepancy between their self-reported race/ethnicity and the race/ethnicity that they perceive most students in their school think they are. California Department of Education (CDE) data were used to identify the largest racial/ethnic group for each grade in each participant’s school, which was then used to identify participants who perceived being miscategorized as the largest racial/ethnic group in their grade (28%) and those who did not (72%). Participants self-reported feelings of school safety and social anxiety, and CDE data were used to calculate Simpson’s index to capture the racial/ethnic diversity of each grade.

Results. Results for a conditional process analysis indicated that while controlling for participants’ sex, race/ethnicity, parent education, immigrant generation, and baseline social anxiety and school safety, perceiving to be miscategorized as the largest racial/ethnic group in 6th grade was significantly related to feeling safer at school in 7th grade (b = 1.22, p = .039), and this association was marginally moderated by racial/ethnic diversity (b = –1.67, p = .065). Additionally, feeling safer at school in 7th grade was associated with significantly less social anxiety in 8th grade (b = –0.16, p = .006). Results from the index of moderated mediation indicate that there was a significant conditional indirect effect (index: 0.272, 95% CI [0.001, 0.660])., Perceiving racial/ethnic miscategorization as the largest racial/ethnic group was associated with less social anxiety, and this was explained by an increased sense of school safety; however, this process was only significant for youth who attended schools with relatively low ethnic diversity (b = –0.05, 95% CI [–0.099, -0.007]).

Discussion. Findings were consistent with our hypothesis. For students who attended schools with low ethnic diversity, perceiving miscategorization as the largest racial/ethnic group in 6th grade (versus one of the other smaller racial/ethnic groups) was associated with a stronger sense of school safety. In turn, youth also had less social anxiety at the end of middle school.
Our findings underscore the importance of understanding the nuance of racial/ethnic miscategorization on development during early adolescence, while highlighting the importance of the social context.

Authors

• Jenna Felkey, University of California - Los Angeles
  Presenting Author

• Elianny Edwards
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sandra Graham, University of California, Los Angeles
  Non-Presenting Author