An investigation of the effects of a school-based intervention on feelings of personal expressiveness in multi-problem adolescent youth

This study was conducted to determine the effects of the Changing Lives Program intervention on troubled adolescents' feelings of personal expressiveness, believed to be one domain of positive identity development. Forty-three intervention and twenty nonintervention comparison control participants were given a battery of pre-, post-, and follow-up assessments including the Personally Expressive Questionnaire (Waterman, 1995), which was used to derive participants' feelings of personal expressiveness scores. Using Repeated Measures Analysis of Multivariate Analysis (RMANOVA), a significant four-way interaction of Time X Condition X Gender X Ethnicity was found relative to the Control, Roy's Ɵ = .166, F(2,47) = 3.899, p < .027 indicating that intervention participants' feelings of personal expressiveness did increase significantly relative to the control group. Furthermore, the results suggest differential outcomes based on ethnicity, suggesting the need for future study with respect to specificity of effects and mechanisms of identity formation in differing ethnic subgroups.

Correlations among Coping Skills and Life Satisfaction in Ethnic Older Caregivers

The purpose of the present study is to extend our current understanding of the effects of caregiver burden on life satisfaction by examining whether or not there are ethnic differences in coping strategies used to manage caregiving. Several specific hypotheses were tested in order to determine the linkages among age, gender, ethnicity (i.e., familism, filial piety), caregiver burden, coping with caregiving, and life satisfaction. A total of 103 Hispanic and Non-Hispanic White participants ages 60 and older were included in this study (mean age was 67.42; 16.5% male; 83.5 % female; 52.4% Hispanic; 47.6% Non-Hispanic White). The results suggest that demographics and certain coping skills can influence levels of life satisfaction and burden experienced by caregivers. The findings from this study shed light on how to structure effective psychoeducational interventions, facilitate adaptive coping, reduce burden, and improve life satisfaction for older adult caregivers.