Pathways to maladjustment and resilience in inner-city minority youth: Examining academic failure and hopelessness as mediators between contextual risk factors and child maladjustment from a developmental psychopathology perspective

Literature has consistently documented links between contextual factors and developmental outcomes in inner city youth. Most of these associations, however, have been cross-sectional in nature. Furthermore, there is only a limited understanding of the pathways contributing to maladjustment and resilience in this population. While ethnographic studies have taken into account factors of academic failure and hopelessness, quantitative studies have lagged. The present study examines these issues by addressing the main question of how the experiences of low-income, African-American children contribute to later maladjustment or resilience, focusing on academic failure and hopelessness as significant mediators in the pathway to later outcomes.;The following document begins with an introduction to outcomes in this population and links between contextual factors and outcomes. This is followed by a section devoted to academic failure and hopelessness as mediators, beginning with a description of why one would expect these to function as contributors to later maladjustment. As a conceptual framework, a model of the development of inner-city youth is presented, and each of its components included in the current study is described. Following this is a section that describes methodological improvements of the current study over existing research, including developmental considerations, multiple domains of risks, and mechanisms driving the associations. Primary questions are stated next. The methods section of the document then identifies the sample and describes the study procedures. Lastly, the results section outlines the findings from the completed analyses, followed by the conclusion which revisits the questions and the results from the current study and suggests directions for future researchers.;Specific aims of the proposed study are to determine whether (1) a hypothesized mediational model of the development of inner-city minority youth is supported as a better fit for the data from a multicohort, longitudinal study, than competing non-mediational models, (2) gender, religiosity, extracurricular involvement, and affiliation with prosocial peers moderate the associations specified within the model, and (3) there is a subgroup within this larger sample with higher levels of hopelessness who are significantly more likely to suffer from the risks and outcomes in the model as compared to their lower hopelessness counterparts.