Evaluating cohort and intervention effects on black adolescents’ ethnic–racial identity: A cognitive–cultural approach

The importance of ethnic–racial socialization and ethnic–racial identity as protective factors in the psychological and social adjustment of Black youth is well established in the literature. Whaley (2003) developed a cognitive–cultural model of identity to explicate the process by which ethnic–racial socialization impacts ethnic–racial identity and subsequent social and behavioral outcomes among adolescents of African descent. The present study tests the cognitive–cultural model of identity utilizing pilot data from a modified Africentric intervention program. Both explicit and implicit aspects of ethnic–racial identity were evaluated between two cohorts: one group in 2003, which represented historical controls, and another group in 2008 which received the intervention and has pre-test and post-test data. We hypothesized that the evaluation of underlying implicit or schematic processes would be more sensitive to changes in ethnic–racial identity resulting from cohort and intervention effects. Our results confirmed this hypothesis. Implications of applying mainstream behavioral science research paradigms to issues of special concern to the Black community are discussed.