Sandra Graham
Biographic Data
| ID | 3597786 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sandra Graham |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sandra |
| FAMILY NAME | Graham |
| SIGNATURE | GRAHAM S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Los Angeles |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3526-7277 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 75 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1233 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 74 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1982 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 17 |
Context matters: How relative representation shapes Black and Latiné adolescents' perceptions of school ethnic climate and discrimination
Introduction The current study used path analysis to examine Black and Latiné students' experiences with discrimination at school as a function of relative representation and perceptions of the school ethnic climate. Method Participants included 2,063 United States eighth graders (51% female; M = 13.33 years) who self-identified as Black (24%) or Latiné (76%). Results Results indicated that relative representation significantly predicted percepti…
Developmental Trajectories of Friendship Homophily, Racial/Ethnic Identity Commitment, and Intergroup Bias Across Middle School
Learning Variability Network Exchange (Levante): A Global Framework for Measuring Children's Learning Variability Through Collaborative Data Sharing
Despite the ubiquity of variation in child development within individuals, across groups, and across tasks, timescales, and contexts, dominant methods in developmental science and education research still favor group averages, short snapshots of time, and single environments. The Learning Variability Network Exchange (LEVANTE) is a framework designed to enable coordinated data collection by research teams worldwide, with the goal of measuring var…
Young Adult Adaptability to the Social Challenges of the Covid-19 Pandemic: The Protective Role of Friendships
The continuing COVID-19 pandemic enables assessment of the adaptability of young adults to non-normative stressors threatening their social-emotional wellbeing. Focusing specifically on a developmentally critical social challenge of restricted in-person contact, the goal of the current study was to examine the role of friendships in alleviating social-emotional problems. Data were collected via online surveys from an ethnically diverse sample ( n…
The power of askingwhy: Attribution retraining programs for the classroom teacher
Racial/ethnic discrimination, cultural mistrust, and psychological maladjustment among Asian American and Latino adolescent language brokers
Our findings suggest that reports of racial/ethnic discrimination and perceptions of cultural mistrust exacerbate psychological challenges among Latino and Asian American adolescent language brokers and highlight the importance of further examining how discrimination influences the psychosocial development of brokering youth. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
School police officers' roles: The influence of social, developmental and historical contexts
Same-race friendship preference across the middle school years: The role of school racial/ethnic context
The current study examined the developmental trajectory of same-race friendship preference of racially/ethnically diverse students over the course of middle school. Participants were African American, Asian, Latinx, and White youth recruited at the start of middle school in 6th grade (N = 4,361; M age = 11.33 years) and followed across the 3 years of middle school. School racial/ethnic diversity and the racial/ethnic representation of students in…
Meeting in the Middle: The Role of Mutual Biracial Friends in Cross-Race Friendships
Social network analysis was used to examine the role of having a mutual biracial friend on cross-race friendship nominations among monoracial sixth-grade students (Mage = 10.56 years) in two racially diverse middle schools (n = 385; n = 351). Monoracial youth were most likely to choose same-race peers as friends but more likely to choose biracial than different-race peers as friends, suggesting that racial homophily may operate in an incremental …
Numerical Minority Status in Middle School and Racial/Ethnic Segregation in Academic Classes
This study examined the effects of racial/ethnic segregation (i.e., overrepresentation) in academic classes on belonging, fairness, intergroup attitudes, and achievement across middle school (n = 4,361; MageT1 = 11.33 years), and whether effects depended on numerical minority status in school and race/ethnicity. Latent growth curve models revealed that experiencing more segregation than usual predicted less belonging and fairness than usual for a…
Ethnicity, Peers, and Academic Achievement: Who Wants to be Friends with the Smart Kids
Doing better but feeling worse: An attributional account of achievement—self-esteem disparities in Asian American students
Friends in Activities, School-related Affect, and Academic Outcomes in Diverse Middle Schools
Defending Victims of Bullying in Early Adolescence: A Multilevel Analysis
Race/Ethnicity and Social Adjustment of Adolescents: How (Not if) School Diversity Matters
In this article, I describe a program of research on the psychosocial benefits of racial/ethnic diversity in urban middle schools. It is hypothesized that greater diversity can benefit students' mental health, intergroup attitudes, and school adaptation via three mediating mechanisms: (a) the formation and maintenance of cross-ethnic friendships, (b) the development of complex social identities, and (c) decreases in perceived vulnerability. These…
Mismatches in Self-Reported and Meta-Perceived Ethnic Identification across the High School Years
When and How Do Students Benefit From Ethnic Diversity in Middle School
The effects of school-based ethnic diversity on student well-being and race-related views were examined during the first year in middle school. To capture the dynamic nature of ethnic exposure, diversity was assessed both at the school-level (n = 26) and based on academic course enrollments of African American, Asian, Latino, and White students (n = 4,302; M = 11.33 years). Across all four pan-ethnic groups, school-level ethnic diversity was asso…
Same‐Ethnic, Interethnic, and Interracial Friendships Among Asian Early Adolescents
This study examined the psychological functions of three friendship types (i.e., same ethnic, interethnic, and interracial) in a sample of 785 sixth-grade Asian students (M age = 11.5 years). Participants listed their friends in sixth grade and whether each nominated friend was the same or a different ethnic group. They also reported on their ethnic identity, intergroup relations, and perceived school safety. Results showed that same-ethnic frien…
Multiracial in Middle School: The Influence of Classmates and Friends on Changes in Racial Self-Identification
In the present research, the influence of racial diversity among classmates and friends on changes in racial self-identification among multiracial youth was examined (n = 5,209; M age = 10.56 years at the beginning of sixth grade). A novel individual-level measure of diversity among classmates based on participants' course schedules was utilized. The findings revealed that although there was some fluidity in multiracial identification at the begi…
For Better or Worse: Friendship Choices and Peer Victimization Among Ethnically Diverse Youth in the First Year of Middle School
Latinos’ Changing Ethnic Group Representation From Elementary to Middle School: Perceived Belonging and Academic Achievement
This study examined the association between change in ethnic group representation from elementary to middle school and Latino students' school belonging and achievement. The ethnic diversity of students' middle school was examined as a moderator. Participants were 1,825 Latino sixth graders from 26 ethnically diverse urban middle schools. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that a change in ethnic representation toward fewer Latinos in middle…
Victims of Bullying in Schools
This article provides an overview of current research on bullying (peer victimization, peer harassment) in school, with a focus on victims of such bullying. The 1st section provides a working definition of bullying and its many forms. The 2nd section describes some of the known consequences of being bullied for mental health, physical health, and academic achievement. The 3rd section turns to individual characteristics that might place children a…
Race and Academic Motivation
Pubertal Timing of Latinas and School Connectedness During the Transition to Middle School
A Motivational Intervention for African American Boys Labeled as Aggressive
A 12-week, 32-lesson afterschool intervention was conducted with third- to fifth-grade urban African American boys classified as aggressive. Grounded in attribution theory and organized around the construct of perceived responsibility in self and others, the intervention focused on increasing both social skills and academic motivation. Participants ( N = 64) were randomly assigned to an intervention or no-treatment control group. Boys in the inte…
Age differences in sensation seeking and impulsivity as indexed by behavior and self-report: Evidence for a dual systems model
It has been hypothesized that sensation seeking and impulsivity, which are often conflated, in fact develop along different timetables and have different neural underpinnings, and that the difference in their timetables helps account for heightened risk taking during adolescence. In order to test these propositions, the authors examined age differences in sensation seeking and impulsivity in a socioeconomically and ethnically diverse sample of 93…
The antecedents and consequences of racial/ethnic discrimination during adolescence: Does the source of discrimination matter
In the current study, we examined the precursors and consequences of discrimination for 876 Latino, African American, and Asian American adolescents (Mage = 16.9 years, SD = 0.43). The race/ethnic characteristics of schools and neighborhoods influenced adolescents' perceptions of the race/ethnic climates of these contexts. In turn, adolescents who viewed climates more negatively were more likely to perceive discriminatory treatment by school pers…
Latino Adolescents’ Experiences of Discrimination Across the First 2 Years of High School: Correlates and Influences on Educational Outcomes
Changes in perceptions of discrimination were examined with 668 Latino students (62% Mexican American; 56% female; M(age) = 14.6 years). Adolescents' reports of discrimination increased across the first 2 years of high school. Perceptions of discrimination were higher for boys and for primary language brokers, as well as for adolescents in schools with more ethnically diverse student bodies but a less diverse teaching staff. Path analysis reveale…
Self-blame and peer victimization in middle school: An attributional analysis
Most of the subjects were White and middle class: Trends in published research on African Americans in selected APA journals, 1970–1989
Ethnicity, Peer Harassment, and Adjustment in Middle School: An Exploratory Study
In an urban middle school, African American (n = 116), Latino (n = 118), and students from four other ethnic groups (labeled multiethnic, n = 172) completed nomination procedures that identified classmates who were perceived as aggressive or as victims of peer harassment. Peer acceptance and rejection also were measured by nomination procedures, and participants reported their self-perceived loneliness, social anxiety, and global self-esteem. Com…
Beyond the Individual: The Impact of Ethnic Context and Classroom Behavioral Norms on Victims' Adjustment
With a sample of 1,630 sixth-grade students from 77 classrooms, the authors used hierarchical linear modeling to examine how ethnicity within context and classroom social disorder influenced the association between peer victimization and social-psychological adjustment (loneliness and social anxiety). Victimized students in classrooms where many classmates shared their ethnicity reported feeling the most loneliness and social anxiety. Additionall…
Race/Ethnicity and Social Adjustment of Adolescents: How (Not if) School Diversity Matters
In this article, I describe a program of research on the psychosocial benefits of racial/ethnic diversity in urban middle schools. It is hypothesized that greater diversity can benefit students' mental health, intergroup attitudes, and school adaptation via three mediating mechanisms: (a) the formation and maintenance of cross-ethnic friendships, (b) the development of complex social identities, and (c) decreases in perceived vulnerability. These…
Age differences in affective decision making as indexed by performance on the Iowa Gambling Task
Contemporary perspectives on age differences in risk taking, informed by advances in developmental neuroscience, have emphasized the need to examine the ways in which emotional and cognitive factors interact to influence decision making. In the present study, a diverse sample of 901 individuals between the ages of 10 and 30 were administered a modified version of the Iowa Gambling Task, which is designed to measure affective decision making. Resu…
When and How Do Students Benefit From Ethnic Diversity in Middle School
The effects of school-based ethnic diversity on student well-being and race-related views were examined during the first year in middle school. To capture the dynamic nature of ethnic exposure, diversity was assessed both at the school-level (n = 26) and based on academic course enrollments of African American, Asian, Latino, and White students (n = 4,302; M = 11.33 years). Across all four pan-ethnic groups, school-level ethnic diversity was asso…
Are adolescents less mature than adults: "Minors' access to abortion, the juvenile death penalty, and the alleged APA "flip-flop
The American Psychological Association's (APA's) stance on the psychological maturity of adolescents has been criticized as inconsistent. In its Supreme Court amicus brief in Roper v. Simmons (2005), which abolished the juvenile death penalty, APA described adolescents as developmentally immature. In its amicus brief in Hodgson v. Minnesota (1990), however, which upheld adolescents' right to seek an abortion without parental involvement, APA argu…
Attributional and emotional determinants of aggression among African-American and Latino young adolescents
Attribution theorists propose that negative actions of others perceived as intended elicit anger, and anger then functions as a motivator of hostile behavior. We examined the understanding of these attribution-affect-action linkages among young ethnic minority adolescents. Forty-four Latino and African-American middle-school children labeled as aggressive and a matched group of nonaggressives read causally ambiguous scenarios describing negative …
Discerning direct and mediated effects of ecological structures and processes on adolescents' educational outcomes
This short-term longitudinal study examined the relations among family and school characteristics, family-level processes (youth perceptions of parent-adolescent interactions), school-level processes (youth perceptions of school belonging, school climate), adolescents' school engagement, and later academic performance. Participants were an ethnically diverse, urban sample of 1,120 9th-grade students (M age = 14.6 years). The structural characteri…
Navigating the Transition to Multi‐Ethnic Urban High Schools: Changing Ethnic Congruence and Adolescents' School‐Related Affect
This short‐term longitudinal study investigated 918 students' school‐related affect across the transition to high school. The study focused specifically on the moderating effect of change in student ethnic congruence from middle to high school. Results indicate that students experiencing more ethnic incongruence from middle to high school, in particular African American and male students, reported declining feelings of school belonging over time.…
It Must Be Me”: Ethnic Diversity and Attributions for Peer Victimization in Middle School
This study examined the mediating role of self-blaming attributions on peer victimization-maladjustment relations in middle school and the moderating role of classroom ethnic diversity. Latino and African American 6th grade participants (N = 1105, 56% female) were recruited from middle schools in which they were either members of the numerical majority ethnic group, the numerical minority, or one of several ethnic groups in ethnically diverse sch…
Same‐Ethnic, Interethnic, and Interracial Friendships Among Asian Early Adolescents
This study examined the psychological functions of three friendship types (i.e., same ethnic, interethnic, and interracial) in a sample of 785 sixth-grade Asian students (M age = 11.5 years). Participants listed their friends in sixth grade and whether each nominated friend was the same or a different ethnic group. They also reported on their ethnic identity, intergroup relations, and perceived school safety. Results showed that same-ethnic frien…
Early Puberty, Peer Victimization, and Internalizing Symptoms in Ethnic Minority Adolescents
One thousand twenty-four African American and Latino sixth graders participated in a study examining the moderating role of pubertal development on the relation between peer victimization and adolescent self-worth, depressed mood, and physical symptoms using peer and self-reported victimization. It was hypothesized that early-maturing girls who were victimized would experience heightened internalized distress. Among boys, two competing hypotheses…
Using latent class analysis to identify aggressors and victims of peer harassment
This study used latent class analysis (LCA) to identify and classify individuals into aggressor and victim latent classes. Participants were over 2,000 sixth grade students who completed peer nomination procedures that identified students who had reputations as perpetrators and/or victims of physical, verbal, or relational harassment. Results showed five latent classes. Consistent with previous research, LCA identified latent classes of victims, …
An attributional examination of retributive versus utilitarian philosophies of punishment
Attributions of aggressive and nonagressive African-American male early adolescents: A study of construct accessibility
This study proposed that aggressive and nonaggressive children might differ in the readiness with which biased causal beliefs are accessed from memory and used as guides to interpersonal judgment. Aggressive and nonaggressive African-American male early adolescents were randomly assigned to a condition that primed the perception of negative outcomes as intentionally caused or unintentionally caused or to a no-priming control condition. Participan…
Too Much of a Good Thing? How Breadth of Extracurricular Participation Relates to School-Related Affect and Academic Outcomes During Adolescence
Peer Victimization and Mental Health During Early Adolescence
In this article, the authors describe recent research on peer victimization and its mental health consequences during early adolescence. They begin with a working definition of peer victimization that distinguishes it from lethal school violence and from simple conflict between peers. They then present a psychosocial profile of youth who are chronic victims of harassment, with a particular focus on their mental health challenges. To aid the under…
The Influence of Classroom Ethnic Composition on Same‐ and Other‐ethnicity Peer Nominations in Middle School
The study of peer group status typically involves examination of peer nominations received. In this study, the focus was on nominations given and received. We examined the degree to which middle school students from different ethnic groups demonstrate same‐ethnicity preferences in their peer nominations, the effects of the classroom ethnic composition on these preferences, and the association between same‐ethnicity preferences and social standing…
Stereotypes of Achievement Striving Among Early Adolescents
Using affective cues to infer causal thoughts
Pity, Anger, and Guilt: An Attributional Analysis
Three basic dimensions of causality, which represent the underlying properties of causes, have been identified: locus, stability, and controllability. Evidence was presented that these dimensions are linked with feelings of pity, anger, and guilt. Two experiments were conducted; one asked participants to recall situations in which pity, anger, and guilt were experienced, while the other examined ratings of pity and anger as a function of the a pr…
Using affective cues to infer causal thoughts
Communicating sympathy and anger to Black and White children: The cognitive (attributional) consequences of affective cues
This study examined the influence of affective cues from others on children's achievement-related cognitions and performance following failure. Black and white children of middle and low social class were induced to fail an achievement task and an experimenter communicated either sympathy, anger, or no affective reaction. Children's judgments of personal competence, expectancies for success, causal attributions for failure, and persistence on the…
Attributional mediators of evaluation, expectancy, and affect: A response time analysis
Attribution theory: Applications to Achievement, Mental Health, and Interpersonal Conflict
Public Confession and Forgiveness
In this article, we report investigations of four role‐playing experiments and one laboratory manipulation that examine the effects of confession on forgiveness and other related judgments. The basic paradigm in the simulation studies was to reveal that a political figure or student in a class confessed either following or not following an accusation, or denied personal responsibility for the act. Among the variables manipulated were the attribut…
Attributional and emotional determinants of aggression among African-American and Latino young adolescents
Attribution theorists propose that negative actions of others perceived as intended elicit anger, and anger then functions as a motivator of hostile behavior. We examined the understanding of these attribution-affect-action linkages among young ethnic minority adolescents. Forty-four Latino and African-American middle-school children labeled as aggressive and a matched group of nonaggressives read causally ambiguous scenarios describing negative …
Most of the subjects were White and middle class: Trends in published research on African Americans in selected APA journals, 1970–1989
Motivation in African Americans
Close to 140 studies comprising an African-American empirical literature on motivation were reviewed. The review was organized around five topics subsumed under three broader assumptions about the relationship between ethnic minority status and motivation. First, research on the achievement motive was reviewed to examine the belief that African Americans lack certain personality traits deemed necessary for achievement strivings. Second, the empir…
Attributions of aggressive and nonagressive African-American male early adolescents: A study of construct accessibility
This study proposed that aggressive and nonaggressive children might differ in the readiness with which biased causal beliefs are accessed from memory and used as guides to interpersonal judgment. Aggressive and nonaggressive African-American male early adolescents were randomly assigned to a condition that primed the perception of negative outcomes as intentionally caused or unintentionally caused or to a no-priming control condition. Participan…
An attributional analysis of the development of excuse giving in aggressive and nonaggressive African American boys
This study examined the effects of age and aggressive status on children's undefstanding and use of excuses. Younger (3rd-5th grade) and older (6th-8th grade) aggressive and nonaggressive African American boys were first instructed to imagine that they failed to fulfill a social obligation. The cause of the transgression was presented as controllable (e.g., choosing to do something else), and children indicated whether they would reveal that caus…
An attributional examination of retributive versus utilitarian philosophies of punishment
Exploring achievement values among ethnic minority early adolescents.
Two studies examined middle school students' achievement values by using peer nomination procedures. Nominations of peers whom participants admired, respected, and wanted to be like were summed to create a values index. Respondents also nominated peers who fit 6 behavioral descriptions including effort versus disengagement and being socially responsible versus deviant. Study 1 participants were African American and Study 2 participants were ethni…
Self-blame and peer victimization in middle school: An attributional analysis
Peer harassment, psychological adjustment, and school functioning in early adolescence.
The relations between peer harassment, psychological adjustment, and school functioning were investi-gated with an ethnically diverse sample of middle school students. A conceptual model, which proposed that self-perceived peer harassment predicts psychological adjustment (loneliness, depression, and self-worth), which in turn predicts school outcomes (GPA and attendance), was tested using concurrent data (n = 244). Structural equation modeling s…
Stereotypes of Achievement Striving Among Early Adolescents
Ethnicity, Peer Harassment, and Adjustment in Middle School: An Exploratory Study
In an urban middle school, African American (n = 116), Latino (n = 118), and students from four other ethnic groups (labeled multiethnic, n = 172) completed nomination procedures that identified classmates who were perceived as aggressive or as victims of peer harassment. Peer acceptance and rejection also were measured by nomination procedures, and participants reported their self-perceived loneliness, social anxiety, and global self-esteem. Com…
Bullying Among Young Adolescents: The Strong, the Weak, and the Troubled
Objectives. Bullying and being bullied have been recognized as health problems for children because of their association with adjustment problems, including poor mental health and more extreme violent behavior. It is therefore important to understand how bullying and being bullied affect the well-being and adaptive functioning of youth. We sought to use multiple data sources to better understand the psychological and social problems exhibited by …
Juveniles' competence to stand trial: A comparison of adolescents' and adults' capacities as trial defendants
Abilities associated with adjudicative competence were assessed among 927 adolescents in juvenile detention facilities and community settings. Adolescents' abilities were compared to those of 466 young adults in jails and in the community. Participants at 4 locations across the United States completed a standardized measure of abilities relevant for competence to stand trial (the MacArthur Competence Assessment Tool--Criminal Adjudication) as wel…
Priming unconscious racial stereotypes about adolescent offenders.
Two studies examined unconscious racial stereotypes of decision makers in the juvenile justice system. Police officers (Experiment 1) and juvenile probation officers (Experiment 2) were subliminally exposed to words related to the category Black or to words neutral with respect to race. In a presumably unrelated task, officers read 2 vignettes about a hypothetical adolescent who allegedly committed either a property crime (shoplifting from a conv…
Beyond the Individual: The Impact of Ethnic Context and Classroom Behavioral Norms on Victims' Adjustment
With a sample of 1,630 sixth-grade students from 77 classrooms, the authors used hierarchical linear modeling to examine how ethnicity within context and classroom social disorder influenced the association between peer victimization and social-psychological adjustment (loneliness and social anxiety). Victimized students in classrooms where many classmates shared their ethnicity reported feeling the most loneliness and social anxiety. Additionall…
Early Puberty, Peer Victimization, and Internalizing Symptoms in Ethnic Minority Adolescents
One thousand twenty-four African American and Latino sixth graders participated in a study examining the moderating role of pubertal development on the relation between peer victimization and adolescent self-worth, depressed mood, and physical symptoms using peer and self-reported victimization. It was hypothesized that early-maturing girls who were victimized would experience heightened internalized distress. Among boys, two competing hypotheses…
From beliefs to behavior: The mediating role of hostile response selection in predicting aggression
This study evaluated the complementary roles that aggressive normative beliefs and hostile response selections play in predicting adolescents' aggressive behavior. Self-, peer-, and teacher-reported data were collected from 2003 young adolescents from a variety of ethnic backgrounds (Black, Latino, Asian, White) during the fall of their sixth grade year to test the hypothesis that adolescents' hostile response selections mediate the association b…
Peer Victimization, Aggression, and Their Co-Occurrence in Middle School: Pathways to Adjustment Problems
Ethnic Diversity and Perceptions of Safety in Urban Middle Schools
Students' perceptions of their safety and vulnerability were investigated in 11 public middle schools (more than 70 sixth-grade classrooms) that varied in ethnic diversity. Results of hierarchical linear modeling analyses indicate that higher classroom diversity is associated with feelings of safety and social satisfaction. African American (n = 511) and Latino (n = 910) students felt safer in school, were less harassed by peers, felt less lonely…
Psychology (72 works) · Developmental psychology (57 works) · Social Psychology (55 works) · Social Psychology (41 works) · Ethnic group (39 works) · Sociology (28 works) · Bullying, Victimization, and Aggression (25 works) · Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development (24 works) · Medicine (18 works) · Poison control (17 works)