Record Details
An intervention for at-risk Chicano adolescents using their dating relationships
ScholarsArchive at Oregon State University
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Title | An intervention for at-risk Chicano adolescents using their dating relationships |
| Names |
Merritt, Bonnie Louise
(creator) |
| Date Issued | 2006 (iso8601) |
| Note | Access restricted to the OSU Community |
| Abstract | Many mental health programs are designed for the dominant culture and are adapted to be applied to various non-dominant cultures such as the Chicano population. This means that Chicano adolescents' needs, especially any who are from an oppressed culture are not addressed. Therefore, services designed specifically for at-risk Chicano adolescents are vital. In this study, these concerns are addressed through the development of an intervention designed specifically for Chicano adolescents involved in delinquency to help promote positive interpersonal relationships. The intervention used the adolescents' interest in dating relationships to capture their attention and then attach concepts from the integrated literature on Chicano values, oppressed culture, and adolescent development meaningfully to their own lives. The overall goal is to pool all this knowledge in order to develop and test a pilot of this intervention for at -risk Chicano adolescents. The intervention was designed as a sixteen session psycho-educational group for Chicano adolescent males. It focused on helping these adolescents develop and sustain more positive and empathetic opposite sex relationships. The intervention also utilized school they attend, and multiple adults and peer groups that have meaning in the children's lives. In order to do prevention for children, one must closely examine at the systems and groupings that affect them. One of the main systems that a child becomes involved in is the parental system, consisting of the child's mother and father or any other guardian acting as the responsible parent. Much research (Florsheim, 2003; Gottman & Katz, 1996; Peterson & Zill, 1986) suggests that the parental system has immense effects on the children involved. For instance, as the parents interact around their children, the children will pick up on the parents' moods or the parents' moods will affect their interactions with their children. From this systemic point of view, the best way to provide prevention would be to start working with the parental system as early as possible before negative patterns begin to form. Although the parental system is often conceptualized as "a couple ", the focus here is on systems. The parental system may include a limited relationship between separated parents, the inclusion of a grandparent, or a network of friends and family who will step in as co-parents. Since most parental systems include a couple, the logical approach for prevention of negative patterns within the couple would be to intervene at the earliest formation of couples. When looking at the early couple system, one need go no further than high school. In high school a large portion of the adolescent population begins their interest in, and experiments with, dating relationships. This study will focus on creating an intervention for adolescent dating relationships as a developmentally appropriate precursor to later intimate and romantic relationships (Furman, 2002). This is a good time to begin dialogue about partner relationships because of adolescent interest in dating relationships as a part of their developmental stage. If interventions such as Chicano Life are shown to be more efficacious than standard interventions, practitioners and governmental institutions will need to account for why they too often offer a one size fits all type of intervention. |
| Genre | Thesis |
| Topic | At-risk adolescents |
| Identifier | http://hdl.handle.net/1957/47856 |
