Racial And Ethnic-Related Stress

List the citation (in APA format)

1. What is the citation of the article?

Greer, T.M. (2008). Racial and ethnic-related stressors as predictors of perceived stress and academic performance for african american students at a historically black college and university. The Journal of Negro Education, 77(1), 60-71.

2. Define the problem/research question

• Do racial and ethnic-related stressors predict overall levels of perceived stress for African-American students at an HBCU

• Do racial and ethnic-related stressors predict academic performance among this sample of college students

3. Did the researcher(s) choose a relevant topic that will contribute to the general knowledge base of education?

• The research

What is the hypothesis/hypotheses?

• It is anticipated that racial and ethnic-related stressors would significantly predict overall levels of perceived stress, and yield significant, negative impacts on academic performance (i.e., GPA). Furthermore, gender and other background variables (age, college entrance examinations cores, educational class status, and college aspiration) would also suggest that these variables were associated with perceptions of stress and academic outcomes for African-American college students. (p. 62)

5. What type of methodology was used? Justify your answer.

• A demographic questionnaire was used to gather data on age, gender, educational class level, SAT scores, cumulative GPA, and educational aspirations.

• General Perceived stress scales measured subjective appraisal of experiences of stress

• Ethnic-related stress scales were used to asses racial and ethnicity related stressors experienced in the campus environment

6. Discuss the adequacy of the research design/data collection or sampling/research procedures.

• I would have used an electronic method to gather the data instead of a paper-pencil format. I believe this would have allowed the data to only be entered once and analyze which would have decrease paper

• I believe the testing and validation of the data was done correctly. I would have looked for other variables to test for stressors. As stated the data seems to show that African-Americans at HBCU struggle with campus climate more so that ethnic-related stressors.

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8. What are the threats to validity? Justify your answer.

• Internal

• Statistical regression – some students in honors courses were included in order to facilitate adequate representation of the full range of GPAs (p. 63)

• Maturation – Even though the study took into account students who left and returned to college at a later date, nothing was mentioned how tis data was valid.

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• External

• Selection-treatment interaction – The students all attended one HBCU (p. 69) in the North.

• Selection-treatment interaction – Students were recruited from certain classes.

9. Suggest how the authors could increase validity.

• I think the participants should have been more than students that were a part of psychology, African American studies, and honors