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Article
Examining correlates of civic engagement among immigrant adolescents in the United States.
USF St. Petersburg campus Faculty Publications
  • Laura Wray-Lake
  • Wendy M. Rote, University of South Florida St. Petersburg
  • Taveeshi Gupta
  • Erin Godfrey
  • Selcuk Sirin
SelectedWorks Author Profiles:

Wendy Rote

Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2015
Disciplines
Abstract

Using a diverse urban sample of immigrant adolescents in the United States (N = 345) followed from 10th grade (Mage = 15.69) to 12th grade, this study examined the extent to which ecological assets (i.e., community connections and social network resources) predicted civic commitments (i.e., community engagement, social responsibility) as potentially mediated by fair society beliefs. The authors also examined whether ethnicity and generation status moderated these associations. As hypothesized, fair society beliefs were higher and predicted greater civic commitments only among Asian youth. Ecological assets were associated with greater civic commitments for all participants; these links were primarily direct for Latino immigrants and indirect (via fair society beliefs) for Asian youth. First-generation immigrants had more ecological assets and were more civically committed, however social network resources predicted fair society beliefs and community engagement only for second-generation youth. These differences indicate that immigrant youth are best understood as a heterogeneous group and suggest the need for further investigation of cultural variations in civic developmental processes.

Comments

Citation only. Full-text article is available through licensed access provided by the publisher. Members of the USF System may access the full-text of the article through the authenticated link provided.

Language
en_US
Publisher
Psychology Press
Creative Commons License
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0
Citation Information
Wray-Lake, L., Rote, W.M., Gupta, T., Godfrey, E. & Sirin, S. (2015). Examining correlates of civic engagement among immigrant adolescents in the United States. Research in Human Development, 12, 10-27. doi: 10.1080/15427609.2015.1010343