biology, identity & opportunity study

Conditions: Stress, Psychological; Stress, Emotional; Stress, Physiological

Summary: this study will implement an intervention designed to promote ethnic and racial identity development. it is hypothesized that the intervention will have positive effects on ethnic-racial identity development, stress biology (including sleep hours and quality and diurnal cortisol profiles), emotional well-being, executive functioning, and academic outcomes, particularly for minority youth.

on average, students from disadvantaged racial-ethnic minority groups (such as blacks and hispanics) show lower academic performance and attainment on a variety of measures, including grades, test scores and graduation rates. racial-ethnic minority students are also exposed to higher levels of stress, especially "race-based stress," including higher levels of discrimination and stereotype threat. past research has shown that race-based stress is related to alterations in stress biology, including altered stress hormone levels and less and lower quality sleep. altered stress hormones and shorter and lower quality sleep in turn have important implications for multiple aspects of cognitive functioning, including executive functioning, that have known impacts on emotional well-being and academic performance. it is therefore hypothesized that disparities in race-based stress and stress biology may help to account for racial-ethnic disparities in academic performance. one (correlational, non-causal) purpose of this study, therefore, is to measure and test associations among race-based social stress (rbss, such as perceived racial discrimination), stress biology (cortisol daily rhythms and sleep hours and quality) and academic outcomes in 300 high school students in a racially diverse, mid-sized, suburban high school. additional research has shown that the presence of a strong ethnic-racial identity is associated with better-regulated stress biology and higher academic attainment. a second major purpose of this study, and the primary purpose of this rct, is to test, through a random-assignment intervention, whether promoting positive ethnic and racial identity development serves to advance ethnic and racial identity development, improve stress biology, and improve emotional well-being, cognition (executive functioning), and academic outcomes. positive effects on these outcomes are expected for those in the experimental (ethnic and racial identity promotion) group, compared to the comparison group. effects are expected to be particularly strong for those in the experimental condition that are from black and hispanic ethnic and racial minority groups. the present study will assess race-based social stress (received racial discrimination and stereotype threat susceptibility), ethnic and racial identity, cortisol, sleep, cognition (executive functioning), emotional and academic adjustment, and academic outcomes in a cohort of 300 high school freshman both before and after an 8-week randomized control trial of the identity project intervention (umaña-taylor \& douglass, 2017; umaña-taylor, douglass, updegraff \& marsiglia, 2017). participants will be recruited in 2 or (if necessary) 3 annual waves, with baseline data collection for the study starting on december 16, 2017. initial tests of the rct effects will occur immediately after the intervention and in the year subsequent to the intervention. questionnaire and administrative outcomes will continue to be measured through the senior year of high school. additional funding will be sought to measure physical health outcomes, and to follow participants into their college and/or work years. study plans and hypotheses for these follow-on studies will be registered separately.

Eligibility criteria:
inclusion criteria: -three hundred students will be recruited through announcements and presentations in required, non-tracked 9th grade classes at 3 mid-sized, diverse, suburban high schools, through flyers posted around the school, and through e-mails sent and presentations made to students and parent groups. exclusion criteria: * the presence of an endocrine disorder or use of corticosteroid based medications. * youth who are unable to read in english will be excluded because materials will solely be available in english. * the study will not include students who do not provide parental consent. * the study will not include students who do not provide their own assent * the study will not include pregnant students in this study.

Keywords: discrimination cortisol sleep identity