R E S E A R C H R E P O R T

Discrimination and Puerto RicanChildren’s and Adolescents’ Mental Health

LAURA A. SZALACHASUMRU ERKUTWellesley College

CYNTHIA GARCÍA COLLBrown University

ODETTE ALARCÓNJACQUELINE P. FIELDSINEKE CEDERWellesley College

Two studies of Puerto Rican youths’ development on the U.S. mainland examined theconsequences of perceived racial/ethnic discrimination on mental health. In Study 1,children were found to have a low likelihood of perceiving discrimination, whereas inStudy 2, nearly half of the adolescent sample reported perceiving racial/ethnic discrimi-nation. Although both groups scored high on multiple indicators of mental health, per-ceiving discrimination and worrying about discrimination were negatively associatedwith some dimensions of self-esteem and positively associated with depression and stress.Adolescents were aware of negative stereotypes about Puerto Ricans, and nearly half ofthem related discriminatory instances. Results suggest that both perceiving discrimina-tion and anxiety regarding discrimination can serve as risk factors for the mentalhealth of this population.• discrimination • youth • child • mental health • Puerto Rican • Latino • race• ethnicity • self-esteem • depression • stress • stereotype • acculturation

• Laura A. Szalacha, Sumru Erkut, Odette Alarcon, Jacqueline P. Fields, and Ineke Ceder, Centerfor Research on Women, Wellesley College; Cynthia Garcıa Coll, Department of Education, BrownUniversity.

The research reported here was supported by Grant MCJ-250643 from the Maternal and ChildHealth Bureau (Title V, Social Security Act), Health Resources and Services Administration, De-partment of Health and Human Services to Odette Alarcon, Sumru Erkut, Jacqueline P. Fields,Cynthia Garcıa Coll, and Nancy Marshall and a grant from the National Institute for ChildHealth and Human Development (R01-HD30592) to Sumru Erkut, Odette Alarcon, and CynthiaGarcıa Coll for a joint project between the Center for Research on Women and the Stone Center atWellesley College.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Laura A. Szalacha, Center forResearch on Women, Wellesley College, 106 Central Street, Wellesley, Massachusetts 02481.E-mail: Lszalacha@wellesley.edu

Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology Copyright 2003 by the Educational Publishing FoundationVol. 9, No. 2, 141–155 1099-9809/03/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/1099-9809.9.2.141

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Puertorriquenos are native-born Americancitizens. They are the second largest of theLatino groups on the U.S. mainland, ap-proximately 3.5 million, but have fared theworst economically (Perez y Gonzalez, 2000).In addition to serious socioeconomic disad-vantage, they become a minority when theysettle on the U.S. mainland. They become“persons of color” by virtue of their culture,language, and skin color, which ranges fromivory to ebony. Given the prevalence of rac-ism in mainstream United States society byand against people of color and those whosefirst language is Spanish, there is a very highlikelihood that Puerto Rican youths will besubjected to prejudiced interactions at somepoint while growing up. Therefore, we needto examine the ability and likelihood ofchildren and adolescents’ perceiving dis-crimination and worrying about being dis-criminated against as a crucial element inexamining their mental health.

Our data come from two studies of com-munity samples of mainland Puerto Ricanyouths (Erkut, Garcıa Coll, & Alarcon,1999). The first was an investigation of themental and physical health and growth ofPuerto Rican children 7–9 years old (Alar-con, 2000), and the second was a study ofnormative development of Puerto Ricanadolescents 13 and 14 years old (Erkut, Alar-con, & Garcıa Coll, 1999). Both interviewstudies were conducted in the Boston area.

Perceiving Discrimination

There are challenges to studying the mentalhealth impact of racial and ethnic discrimi-nation for children and adolescents becausethe ability to perceive discrimination and toattribute it to racial or ethnic prejudice re-quires the acquisition of social–cognitivestructures for processing information (e.g.,race/ethnicity-related concepts, the abilityto classify the self and others on multipledimensions and to take differing perspec-tives necessary for understanding the prin-ciple of unjust treatment; Aboud, 1988; Big-

ler & Liben, 1993; Doyle & Aboud, 1995) aswell as a shared view of reality to which cog-nitive structures are applied.

Verkuyten, Kinket, and van der Wielen(1997) argued that if the acquisition of cer-tain cognitive structures were the sole skillnecessary for the judgment of discrimina-tion to take place, any case of a child callinganother child a name would be perceived asdiscriminatory. Instead, they found, in theirresearch among Turkish, Moroccan, andSurinamese minority 10–13-year-olds andtheir Dutch peers in the Netherlands, that ashared belief system about power differen-tials was an important ingredient in thejudgment of discrimination. Both minorityand Dutch children were less likely to label aname-calling incident as discriminationwhen both the perpetrator and victim wereof the same background or when the perpe-trator was a minority and the victim was aDutch child. The prototypical instance ofdiscrimination was a Dutch child calling aminority child names. The researchers ar-gued that, beyond the acquisition of socialcognitive skills, shared beliefs that definesocial reality (the presence of racism insociety) play a role in the perception ofdiscrimination.

A variant of perceived discrimination ex-ists such that members of disenfranchisedgroups are less likely to perceive being dis-criminated against personally, while they re-port that the group to which they belong isa frequent target of discrimination. Taylor,Wright, and Porter’s (1993) review demon-strates that college students and other adultsconsistently rate discrimination directed attheir group as a whole to be substantiallyhigher than discrimination aimed at them-selves individually, a phenomenon Taylorreferred to as personal/group discriminationdiscrepancy (Taylor, Wright, Moghaddam, &Lalonde, 1990; see also Verkuyten, 1998).

Attributional ambiguity has been cited asone of the reasons why members of minoritygroups do not often judge personal mistreat-ment to be racial and ethnic discrimination(Crocker & Major, 1989). Perceiving racial/ethnic discrimination is a complex attribu-

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tional process. In a social interaction, ayoung person first needs to perceive the in-teraction as negative, to judge the interac-tion as unwarranted by his or her own quali-ties, and then locate the cause of theunearned negativity in the prejudices of theother parties to the interaction, before fi-nally labeling the interaction as involvingdiscrimination. In every step of this process,there are possibilities for making other cau-sal attributions.

Relationship Between PerceivingRacial/Ethnic Discrimination and

Mental Health

“Racist events are inherently demeaning, de-grading and highly personal; they are at-tacks upon and negative responses to some-thing essential about the self that cannot bechanged” (Landrine & Klonoff, 1996, p.147). Researchers have found evidence notonly for everyday experiences of discrimina-tion among disenfranchised groups but alsofor a deleterious relationship between dis-crimination and mental health indicators(Klonoff, Landrine, & Ullman, 1999; Land-rine & Klonoff, 1996). Fisher, Wallace, andFenton’s (2000) study of discrimination dis-tress among adolescents from a variety ofracial and ethnic backgrounds showed thatperceived racial bias was significantly associ-ated with psychological distress and low self-esteem (see also Wong, 1998).

Rumbaut (1994), who conducted a large-scale, multiethnic study of first- and second-generation immigrant adolescents inFlorida and California, found that 55% ofthe adolescents reported having personallyexperienced discrimination. These self-reports of perceived discrimination were sig-nificantly related to depressive symptoms. Inaddition, expecting discrimination was signifi-cantly related to high depressive symptomsas well as to low self-esteem. As noted bySpencer (1999, p. 42), “it is not merely ex-perience, but one’s perception of experi-ence in culturally diverse contexts” that canhave an impact.

In contrast, Crocker and her colleagues(Crocker, 1999; Crocker & Major, 1989,1994; Crocker, Voelkle, Testa, & Major,1991) have provided experimental data in-dicating that attributing negative feedbackto discrimination can have a protective ef-fect on the self-esteem of stigmatizedgroups. If the person making the judgmentis known to be prejudiced, labeling thenegative interaction as discrimination makesit possible for members of stigmatizedgroups to say that the judgment is not aboutthem but that it says something about thekind of person who is saying bad thingsabout them. These findings raise the possi-bility that, under certain conditions, theability and tendency to perceive discrimina-tion may serve as a resilience factor.

Additionally, more recent experimentalstudies have attempted to understand whythe tendency of members of stigmatizedgroups to internalize negative feedback,rather than attribute it to discrimination,also does not seem to affect their generalself-esteem. Crocker (1999) suggested thatnegative feedback received by minorityyouths does not necessarily have a lastingeffect. The shared worldviews found amongmembers of subcultures play a protectiverole in interpreting the negative feedback,so that it does not have the depressive effecton self-esteem that it might otherwise have.Therefore, in experimental studies, whenpeople make internal attributions to them-selves to explain negative outcomes, ratherthan externalizing the cause, this internal-ization only affects how one feels at that mo-ment (state self-esteem) but does not affectthe more deeply held sense of one’s worth(trait self-esteem; see Heatherton & Polivy,1991).

Implications for Children’s and Adolescents’Mental Health

As certain social cognitive structures andworldviews that define parameters relevantto racial and ethnic prejudice are required

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for the ability to perceive racial and ethnicdiscrimination, young children may nothave the necessary prerequisites for attribut-ing perceived unfairness to racial and ethnicprejudice in other than relatively simplecases of name-calling. Indeed, studies ofchildren’s perceptions of racial and ethnicdiscrimination are quite rare. In our studies,therefore, we hypothesize that few childrenwill report perceived racial and ethnic dis-crimination but that for those who do, therewill be negative associations in measures ofmental health.

We concur with survey results that per-ceiving discrimination in real life will havenegative consequences for the mental healthoutcomes of both children and adolescents.Moreover, as Rumbaut’s (1994) and Steele’s(1997; Steele & Aronson, 1995) stereotypethreat research demonstrated, an expecta-tion that one will be discriminated againstcan have as widespread consequences as ex-periencing actual discrimination. We hy-pothesize that, in addition to perceiving dis-crimination, concern or worry that one willbe discriminated against will be associatedwith negative mental health consequencesfor adolescents.

Study 1: Health and Growth of PuertoRican Children Study

In the Health and Growth of Puerto RicanChildren Study (CHILD), which targetedPuerto Rican children in Grades 1–3, com-ponents of healthy development, both physi-cal and psychological, were examined. Amixed recruitment and referral strategywas implemented through advertising inschools, social service agencies, and socialsettings frequented by Puerto Ricans in theGreater Boston area. The designation of be-ing Puerto Rican was established by (a) be-ing born in Puerto Rico or (b) having atleast one parent who was born in PuertoRico. We obtained a volunteering rate of97% among those eligible for the study anda final, full participation rate of 85%. The

target child and his or her primary caregiverwere interviewed separately in the family’shome by a bilingual/bicultural interviewer,in the language of the interviewee’s choice.The caregiver interviews lasted between 1and 2 hr, whereas the children’s interviewswere completed in less than 1 hr.

Method

SAMPLE. The sample was evenly divided ingender (145 boys and 146 girls) and ingrade levels (96 in Grade 1, 80 in Grade 2,105 in Grade 3, and 5 in Grade 4); mean agewas 8.37 years. The majority of the childrenwere born on the U.S. mainland (70.2%),whereas the majority of their mothers andfathers (80.4% and 79.7%, respectively)were born in Puerto Rico. More than half ofthe sample, 55.6%, lived in a two-parenthome; 42.4% with one parent, who was al-most always a mother; and 3% with both par-ents and another relative. The self-reportedincome level of the families was quite low,with more than half of the families living onincomes of $19,999 or less. Two thirds of thesample resided in subsidized housing(67.3%), and 44.4% received governmenteconomic assistance in the form of Aid toFamilies With Dependent Children, SocialSecurity Income, or Social Security DisabilityIncome. The sample was similar to the Puer-to Rican mainland population in householdcomposition and economic level.1 A largemajority of the caregivers (95.9%) preferredto respond in Spanish, as did 67% of thechildren.

INSTRUMENTS. Where existing instrumentscould be utilized, such as Conners’ Parent

1The U.S. Census Current Population Reports (U.S. Bu-reau of the Census, 1993) show 58.7% of the mainlandPuerto Rican population to be living below the povertylevel. In our sample, in 1996 (when the poverty level fora household of four was set at $16,036), 107 (36.7%) ofthe caregivers reported incomes between $0 and$10,000, and 78 (26.8%) reported incomes between$10,001 and $19,999. Given the underreporting bias ofself-report data, we did not regard the slight differenceas important.

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Rating Scale (1973), they were first field-tested and modified, when necessary, for usewith a Puerto Rican population. As Spanishversions of instruments did not always exist,the dual-focus technique for developing bi-lingual/bicultural measures was used to en-sure conceptual and language equivalencein both English and Spanish (see Erkut,Alarcón, García Coll, Tropp, & Vazquez Gar-cía, 1999).

1. Ethnic identity. Children were asked toidentify their ethnicity: “Are you Puer-to Rican?” “Are you Hispanic?” and“Are you American?” This allowed forsingle or multiple designations. Chil-dren who answered no to all threepossibilities were asked to what groupthey thought they belonged. Theywere also asked what they liked anddid not like about being PuertoRican, Hispanic, and/or American.

2. Discrimination. After responding toeach ethnic designation, the child wasasked if another child or an adult haddiscriminated against her or him.Thus, those children who only an-swered positively to “Are you PuertoRican” were asked “Has any kidtreated you badly because you arePuerto Rican?” and “Has any adulttreated you badly because you arePuerto Rican?”2 Those children whoanswered positively to “Are you His-panic?” and/or “Are you American?”were also asked whether they hadbeen discriminated against, by otherchildren or adults, for being Hispanicand for being American.

3. Stress. The School Situation Survey(Helms & Gable, 1989) assessesschool-related sources of stress (aca-demic self-concept, academic stress,peer interactions, and teacher inter-actions) and three ways in whichschool-related stress may be manifest(emotional, behavioral, and physi-cal). It is a 34-item instrument thatincludes items such as “I feel angry atschool” and “Some of my teachers ex-

pect too much of me.” Responses arescored on a 5-point Likert-type scale.3

4. Self-esteem. A new measure of trait self-esteem, Puerto Rican Children’s Self-Esteem Scale, was developed for thisstudy (Szalacha, 1997, 1999). This 32-item scale is a composite of modifieditems from Harter and Pike (1984)and Pallas, Entwisle, Alexander, andWeinstein (1990) and newly createditems. The scale includes items thattap academic, physical skill, friend-ship, character, responsibility, and be-havior domains. Each item is rated ona 5-point Likert-type scale. Eventhough it included items tapping a va-riety of dimensions, the self-esteemmeasure was designed as a singular,overall measure of general self-esteem. The internal consistency esti-mates of the 32-item scale summedscale, as a whole, was estimated to be.88 in the English version and .87 inthe Spanish version.

5. Depression. Depression was measuredusing the Reynolds’ Child DepressionScale (Reynolds, 1989). This 30-itemself-report measure (5-point Likert-type scale) assesses depression in chil-

2The word discrimination was not used in these ques-tions because pilot testing showed that children inGrades 1–3 were unfamiliar with it.3The estimated Cronbach’s alphas for the subscales ofthe School Situation Survey in Spanish and English,respectively, were as follows: Teacher Interaction Stress,.63 and .64 (6 items); Academic Stress, .53 and .57 (3items); Academic Self-Image, .58 and .67 (4 items);Manifestations of Stress–Emotional, .71 and .58 (6items); Behavioral, .57 and .62 (6 items); and Physical,.64 and .58 (3 items). We judged the Spanish and En-glish measures to be equivalent. Although the subscaleshad somewhat low estimated alphas, we regard them asacceptable, based on the very few number of items ineach subscale. We did not use the Peer InteractionStress measure because the estimated reliabilities inboth Spanish and English were below .45. A principal-components analysis indicated that two of the threesubscales could be appropriately combined, but thethird could not. Rather than proceed with one com-bined and one separate subscale, we chose to retain thethree subscales.

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dren ages 8–12 in nonclinical popula-tions. The estimated Cronbach’salphas for the English version was .90and for the Spanish version, .87.

6. Behavioral adjustment. Administered tothe primary caregivers, the children’sbehavioral adjustment was measuredusing the short version (48 items) ofConners’ Parent Rating Scale (Con-ners, 1973). Using this scale, caregiv-ers rated (on a scale of 0 = never to 4 =almost always) 24 categories of symp-toms such as problems of sleep, learn-ing, and sociability, which yieldedscores for six problem areas: ConductProblems, Learning Problems, Psy-chosomatization, Impulsive Hyperac-tivity, Anxiety, and Hyperactivity. Aprincipal-components analysis of thesix subscales confirmed the construc-tion of one overall index of behavior-al adjustment, with near equal weight-ings for each scale and an internalconsistency alpha of .84 for the En-glish responses and .87 for the Span-ish responses.

Results

In terms of ethnic identity, the majority ofthe children (n = 253) identified as PuertoRican: as only Puerto Rican (n = 133), Puer-to Rican and American (n = 55), PuertoRican and Hispanic (n = 40), or all three (n= 25). Only 22 children identified as Ameri-can only, 7 as Hispanic only, 7 as Americanand Hispanic, and 2 did not know. The vastmajority of the children reported that theywere happy to be Puerto Rican (98.4%), His-panic (97.4%), and/or American (98.1%).

When asked, “What do you like and whatdo you dislike about being Puerto Rican?”their responses reflected both Puerto Ricanculture and the concrete thinking of 8-year-olds: They liked Puerto Rican foods, dances,and games, and they liked the beaches andweather of the island and, along with thosewho also identified as “Hispanic,” valued thefact that they spoke Spanish. Some children

disliked that others sometimes treated them“badly” because of their ethnicity, and 3 chil-dren noted disliking the existence of mon-sters like “Chupacabra,” which are a part ofPuerto Rican folklore. In addition to likingto speak Spanish, the children who self-identified as Hispanic also liked the food,music, and dance. They also disliked beingtreated “badly” because of their ethnicityand that “Sometimes the teachers don’t un-derstand my parents.”

When asked about their likes and dis-likes, the children who identified as Ameri-can (solely or in combination with PuertoRican and/or Hispanic) responded in waysparallel to why they liked being PuertoRican: They liked McDonald’s, TV, snow,playing baseball, and that they could speakEnglish. One child responded, “America is agood country, good cops, good president.”There was evidence of some conflict as well,as children said, “I don’t like that somepeople don’t think that I can be Americanand Puerto Rican” and “I don’t like beingAmerican because Americans used to haveslaves, lucky me, I was not alive.”

Only 12% of the sample reported per-ceiving discrimination. Thirty-five of the 36children who reported having been vic-tims of discrimination identified as PuertoRican (either solely or in combinationwith Hispanic and/or American), and theyattributed their discriminatory experiencesto their ethnicity. The children stated that“The children make fun of me for beingPuerto Rican,” “They call me bad nameslike ‘spic’,” and “In school some bad kidspush me and say bad things because I amPuerto Rican.” In response to whether anychild had been treated badly for beingAmerican, there was one case, “They makefun of me when we are in Puerto Ricobecause I was different from them.” Weexamined if there were any variables relatedto whether the children who reported dis-crimination may “behave or sound” morePuerto Rican, but we found no differencesin this small number of children, based ongender, nativity, language preference, or

146 S Z A L A C H A E T A L .

the self-reported color of their skin in per-ceiving discrimination.

On average, the children in the samplewere in good mental health with high self-esteem scores, low depression scores, lowself-reports of stress, and low parental re-ports of behavioral disorders. However, asillustrated in Table 1, there were negativedifferences in mental health for childrenwho reported perceiving discrimination.These children reported significantly higherdepression (M1 = 1.90, M2 = 1.71, respec-tively, for children responding “yes” to per-ceiving discrimination vs. responding “no”),t(289) = 2.39, p < .05, and teacher interac-tion stress (M1 = 2.02, M2 = 1.73), t(289) =2.62, p < .01, in all three measures of mani-festations of stress: physical (M1 = 2.69, M2 =2.31), t(289) = 2.48, p < .01; behavioral (M1

= 1.80, M2 = 1.46), t(289) = 3.58, p < .001;and emotional (M1 = 2.24, M2 = 1.73), t(289)= 2.62, p < .05. There were no significantdifferences in general self-esteem, academicself-concept, or academic stress associatedwith discrimination.

The parents of the children who re-ported having been discriminated againstlisted significantly higher difficulties in thechild’s behavioral adjustment (M1 = 0.87, M2

= 0.67), t(289) = 2.35, p < .01, than did the

parents of the children who did not reporthaving been discriminated against. Thus, al-though not a likely occurrence for children,perceiving discrimination was associatedwith some poor mental health outcomes,but not uniformly so.

Study 2: Puerto Rican Adolescents Study

The Puerto Rican Adolescent Study (PRAS)focused on the normative development ofPuerto Rican 13- and 14-year-olds. The dual-focus method of generating bilingual/bicultural instruments, the geographic areawhere the sample lived, as well as methodsof data collection were all identical to thoseused in Study 1. The target adolescent andhis or her primary caregiver were inter-viewed separately in the family’s home by abilingual/bicultural interviewer, in the lan-guage of the interviewee’s choice. The inter-views of both adolescents and caregiverslasted about 1 hr each.

Method

SAMPLE. We recruited 248 Puerto Rican ado-lescents who were 13 and 14 years old (128

TABLE 1 Differences in Mental Health as a Function of Perceived Discrimination Among PuertoRican Children

Variable

Perceived discrimination

t(289)

Yes (n = 36) No (n = 255)

M SD M SD

Depression 1.90 0.51 1.71 0.44 2.39*Self-esteem 4.30 0.38 4.29 0.38 0.12School stress

Academic self-concept 1.90 0.51 1.70 0.70 0.41Academic stress 3.16 0.98 2.97 1.20 1.01Teacher interaction stress 2.02 0.74 1.73 0.60 2.62**Physical manifestation 2.69 0.98 2.31 0.84 2.48**Behavioral manifestation 1.80 0.61 1.46 0.53 3.58***Emotional manifestation 2.25 0.67 1.87 0.67 3.21**

Behavioral adjustment 0.87 0.50 0.67 0.47 2.35**

Note. Conners’ Parent Rating Scale is measured on a 0–4 scale; all other mental health indicators were measured on a 1–5 scale.

*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

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girls and 120 boys), in Grades 6–9, living inthe Greater Boston area along with their pri-mary caregivers. Participants were recruitedas a family unit (adolescent and caregiver)by a mixed recruitment/referral strategythrough schools, youth organizations, neigh-borhood health clinics, and other social ser-vice agencies serving Puerto Ricans, andthrough door-to-door screening in PuertoRican neighborhoods. We obtained a volun-teering rate of 96% among those eligibleand a final, full participation rate of 86%.

The families of the adolescents in thesample were similar to the Puerto Ricanpopulation nationwide with respect to livingin households headed by a single parent—48.4% nationwide (U.S. Bureau of the Cen-sus, 1994) and 51% of the sample—but werepoorer on average than Puerto Rican chil-dren under 18 living in poverty—51% na-tionwide (Montgomery, 1994) and 72% of thesample. On average, the adolescents were 14years old, and over half were born on theU.S. mainland (58.9%). The majority of theadolescents responded in English (60%).

INSTRUMENTS. The following instrumentswere used in Study 2.

1. Perceived discrimination. This was mea-sured by an index of nine possiblesituations in which discriminationmight occur, using an instrument thatwas created for this study. The leadquestion incorporated the followingdefinition of discrimination:

When people are discriminated against,they are treated badly, not given respect,or are considered inferior for “being dif-ferent.” People can be “different” becausethey speak another language, because ofthe color of their skin, or because theycome from another country or culture.Please respond to the following questionsby answering “Yes” or “No” to the situa-tions when you felt you were treated badlyfor any of these reasons. Consider the pre-sent time, the last 12 months, and not pastexperiences. Within the past year, did youfeel like you were being discriminated

against because of your race, ethnicity,color or language?

Respondents responded to nine situ-ations for which they were to indicatewhether or not they had been dis-criminated against (such as “whenyou were with classmates” or “whenyou wanted service buying somethingat a store” or “waiting for a table at arestaurant”). The variable was codedin two ways: first as a dichotomousvariable, indicating whether the re-spondent was discriminated againstor not, and second as a continuousindex of the cumulative extent of dis-crimination, indicating the number ofsituations in which the respondentperceived discrimination.

2. Discrimination anxiety. This was mea-sured by a nine-item index of thesame nine possible situations used toassess perceived discrimination. Thelead question asked,

Sometimes people don’t want to do thingsbecause they think that they will be dis-criminated against or treated badly or dif-ferently. Do you worry about being dis-criminated against because of your race,ethnicity, color, or language?

Respondents were asked to indicatewhether they worried about discrimi-nation in the same list of situationsused to elicit perceptions of discrimi-nation. This variable was also codeddichotomously (indicating anxietyor not) and as a continuous index,indicating the cumulative risk of dis-crimination anxiety. The two indices,extent of discrimination and risk ofdiscrimination anxiety, were thencombined to form an index of overalldiscrimination.

The adolescents were asked to specu-late on the reasons for any discrimi-nation they might have experienced.They were asked, “When you feel likeyou are being discriminated against,why do you think it happens?” For

148 S Z A L A C H A E T A L .

each of the 16 suggested reasons,such as “because you are Hispanic/Latino/Latina,” “because you are agirl (boy),” and “because of the colorof your skin,” the adolescents an-swered on a 6-point Likert-type scalefrom 0 = never to 6 = always.

3. Self-esteem. This was assessed usingHarter’s (1985) Self-Perception Pro-file for Children, measured on a4-point scale. The scale, which as-sesses trait self-esteem, includes thefollowing subscales: Scholastic Com-petence, Social Acceptance, AthleticCompetence, Physical Appearance,Behavioral Conduct, and Global Self-Worth.4

4. Puerto Rican ethnic pride. Phinney’s(1992) Multigroup Ethnic IdentityMeasure was adapted for use with aPuerto Rican sample. Our versioncontained 13 ethnic identity itemssuch as “I am happy that I am PuertoRican” and “I have tried to learnabout Puerto Rican history, tradi-tions, and customs.” Both the Englishand the Spanish versions were inter-nally consistent.5

5. Psychological acculturation. We devel-oped a psychological acculturationmeasure that explores competenceand identity from a phenomenologi-cal perspective (Tropp, Erkut, GarcıaColl, Alarcon, & Vazquez Garcıa,1999). The 10-item instrument, mea-sured on a 5-point Likert-type scale,highlights the adolescents’ self-perceived identification with andcompetence in two cultures, where 1= only Hispanic/Latino to 3 = bothequally to 5 = only Anglo (American).

6. Self-image and stereotypes. The adoles-cents were asked several open-endedquestions examining if they thoughtthat Anglos (Americans) had stereo-types of Puerto Ricans and what thosemight be; whether they ever had triedto emphasize or hide their PuertoRican heritage; and what impact they

thought having been discriminatedagainst might have had on their lives.

Results

Just under half of the adolescents (49%) re-ported perceiving racial/ethnic discrimina-tion directed against them in at least onesituation, and 47% indicated that they wereworried about being discriminated againstin at least one situation. As illustrated inTable 2, in terms of perceiving discrimina-tion, the most often cited area was “withclassmates” (18%), while each situationlisted was an area of worry for at least 11% ofthe adolescents, with the most often citedarea being “outside your own neighbor-hood” for 26.9% of the adolescents.

When coded as continuous indices (0–9), both the extent of perceived discrimina-tion (M = 1.15, SD = 1.58) and the risk ofdiscrimination anxiety (M = 1.65, SD = 2.37)were highly skewed. This is because 51% ofthe adolescents reported never having per-ceived discrimination, and 53% reportednot being worried about discrimination inany of the nine situations. Slightly less thanhalf (40%) of the adolescents indicated nei-ther any anxiety nor any discrimination ex-periences, 10% indicated anxiety only, 12%indicated experiences only, and 38% indi-cated both (Cramer’s v = .57). The index ofoverall discrimination was, accordingly,skewed as well, with a mean of 2.79 (SD =3.50), in which the highest obtained scorewas 16. Given this skewed distribution, thevariable was categorized into three groups:(a) Neither: those who neither perceivednor worried about discrimination in any

4The estimated Cronbach’s alphas for each of the sub-scales, in English and Spanish, respectively, are as fol-lows: Scholastic Competence, .78 and .78; Social Accep-tance, .71 and .60; Athletic Competence, .75 and .72;Physical Appearance, .77 and .76; Behavioral Conduct,.70 and .80; and Global Self-Worth, .76 and .72.5The estimated Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for theEthnic Pride scale in English and Spanish were .80 and.78, respectively.

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situation (n = 106); (b) Low: those who ei-ther worried or experienced discriminationin one to three situations (n = 68); and (c)High: those who either worried or experi-enced discrimination in four or more situa-tions (n = 75).

Respondents were given a list of reasonswhy discrimination might have happened tothem and were asked to rate the extent towhich the reason applied to them on a scaleof 0 = never to 6 = always. Among the reasonspresented, being Hispanic/Latino (M =3.81, SD = 2.18) scored the highest mean,followed by the others’ thinking that theyouths were “too Puerto Rican” (M = 2.30,SD = 2.47), because of the way they dressed

(M = 2.05, SD = 2.27), and because of theirskin color (M = 2.00, SD = 2.23). There wasa great deal of variability in these responses,and the girls reported significantly higherscores on perceiving discrimination basedon how they dressed and how they ex-pressed their emotions than did the boys.6

6For the reason “because of how you dress, wear yourhair, or your accessories,” the girls’ mean was 2.51 (SD= 2.38) and the boys mean was 1.53 (SD = 2.02), t(246)= 2.43, p < .05; for the reason “because of how youexpress your emotions, for example: feeling angry, ex-cited, etc.,” the girls’ mean was 2.11 (SD = 2.28) and theboys’ mean was 1.19 (SD = 1.78), t(246) = 2.46, p < .05.

TABLE 2 The Environs of Perceived Discrimination and Discrimination Anxiety and Motivationsfor Discrimination Among Puerto Rican Adolescents (N = 249)

Variable

Perceiveddiscrimination

Discriminationanxiety

n % n %

WhereWanted service at store, restaurant 41 16.5 54 21.7With classmates 45 18.0 48 19.2In your own neighborhood 30 12.0 47 18.9With teachers 40 16.1 46 18.4With school administrators 17 6.8 35 14.0Play on sports teams 21 8.4 35 14.0Play in “pick up games” 14 5.6 28 11.2Met someone for the first time 16 6.4 51 20.4Outside your own neighborhood 14 5.6 67 26.9

Whya M SDLatino/Latina/Hispanic 3.81 2.18They think you are too Puerto Rican 2.30 2.47Your dress 2.05 2.27b

Your skin color 2.00 2.23Your accent 1.87 2.19Your expression of emotions 1.70 2.11b

Your gender 1.40 1.95Your gestures 1.16 1.86They think you are too Americanized 1.10 1.83Your physical proximity 1.10 1.82They think you have too much education 1.01 1.68Your name 0.88 1.71They think you are too cultured 0.87 1.60They think you have too little education 0.87 1.58They think you are not cultured enough 0.63 1.43They think you are poor 0.61 1.33They think you have too much money 0.42 1.03

a0 = never to 6 = always. bGirls’ reports were significantly higher than the boys’.

150 S Z A L A C H A E T A L .

Of the 103 adolescents who neither wor-ried about nor had experienced discrimina-tion, only 33 (32%) believed that Anglos(Whites) had stereotypes of Puerto Ricans,in contrast to 88 (62%) of the 143 adoles-cents who reported having been discrimi-nated against or worried about discrimina-tion. Those adolescents said, “They thinkthat we are not intelligent, that we live indirty houses and are all on welfare,” “We areall bad; drug dealers, thieves, and gangsters.There is no future for us and we have babiesat a young age,” “They say we are pigs, alwaysbuying Goya products . . . and that we arenot really a culture,” “Savages, dirty thieves,”“That we drive ‘low riders,’ carry knives, andthat we all sell drugs,” and “Whites thinkthat Puerto Ricans are uneducated, poor,lazy, and low class.”

The floor effect in the discriminationvariables is contrasted with a ceiling effect inthe adolescents’ Puerto Rican ethnic pridewith a mean of 6.36 (SD = 0.51) on a 7-pointscale. The average acculturation level (M =2.31, SD = 0.65) indicates that the adoles-cents considered themselves slightly moreHispanic/Latino (1) than Anglo (Ameri-can) (5).

DISCRIMINATION AND DEMOGRAPHIC CHARAC-TERISTICS. There was a close relationship be-tween reports of perceived discriminationand discrimination anxiety, �2(1, N = 248) =79.8, p < .0001. There were no differences inperceiving discrimination or in discrimina-tion anxiety (coded as dichotomous vari-ables) based on gender, nativity, recency ofmigration, socioeconomic status, or Spanishlanguage predominance. When coded ascontinuous indices, there were no differ-ences in extent of discrimination, risk of dis-crimination anxiety, or overall discrimina-tion based on gender, nativity, recency ofmigration, socioeconomic status, or Spanishlanguage predominance.

DISCRIMINATION AND MENTAL HEALTH. Therewere no significant correlations between ex-tent of discrimination or overall discrimina-tion and the adolescents’ Puerto Rican

pride, but there was a significant weak nega-tive correlation between risk of discrimina-tion anxiety and the adolescents’ PuertoRican pride (r = –.16, p < .01). The strongertheir pride in being Puerto Rican, the fewerthe situations in which they worried aboutbeing discriminated against. There were nocorrelations between extent of discrimina-tion, risk of discrimination anxiety or overalldiscrimination, and the adolescents’ accul-turation level.

There were significant differences in twoof the six subscales of self-esteem. Therewere significant negative differences in glob-al self-worth as a function of overall discrimi-nation, F(3, 247) = 3.30, p < .01. The meanself-worth of adolescents who neither per-ceived nor worried about discrimination (M= 3.29, SD = 0.56) was significantly higherthan that of adolescents who either per-ceived or worried about discrimination in atleast four situations (M = 3.05, SD = 0.68).There were significant negative differencesin athletic competence as a function of over-all discrimination, F(3, 247) = 4.28, p < .001.The mean athletic competence of adoles-cents who neither perceived nor worriedabout discrimination (M = 2.93, SD = 0.69)was significantly higher than that of adoles-cents who perceived or worried about dis-crimination at all (low M = 2.67, SD = 0.68;high M = 2.67, SD = 0.70). Upon furtherinvestigation, we determined that the differ-ences in athletic competence were an arti-fact of the gender differences in athleticcompetence (for boys, M = 3.07; for girls, M= 2.49), t(246) = 7.32, p < .0001, in spite ofthe independence between gender and theoverall discrimination categories, �2(2, N =248) = 1.56, p > .05.

Discussion

In CHILD (Study 1), we found that the chil-dren had a low likelihood of perceiving dis-crimination (12%); in PRAS (Study 2),nearly half of the sample of adolescents re-ported perceived discrimination. Although

D I S C R I M I N A T I O N A N D P U E R T O R I C A N S ’ M E N T A L H E A L T H 151

the two studies do not constitute a longitu-dinal cohort investigation, there are meth-odological and theoretical reasons to arguethat, taken together, the two studies suggestthat children are less likely than adolescentsto perceive discrimination. The method-ological considerations include the fact thatthe two studies were conducted in the sametime period (mid-1990s), used similar re-cruitment strategies and interview proce-dures in the same neighborhoods, and havesamples with similar demographic profiles.At the theoretical level, we have evidencefrom other research that certain social andcognitive structures as well as a sharedworldview (Crocker, 1999; Verkuyten et al.,1997) are developmentally necessary to in-terpret perceived negative outcomes as dis-crimination. Thus it is likely that the major-ity of children in Grades 1–3 may not havethe necessary social cognitive skills or theworldview to perceive racial and ethnicdiscrimination.

However, we must remember that expo-sure to discrimination experiences accumu-lates with age, which suggests that fewer chil-dren may be reporting discriminationexperiences simply because they have notlived long enough to have had significantexposure to discrimination. (Extent of expo-sure was not a confound in our two studiesbecause children were asked about lifetimeexposure, “Have you ever been treatedbadly?,” whereas the adolescents were askedabout discrimination in the last 12 months.)Still, extent of exposure is a potentially con-founding factor regarding whether childrenare able to perceive discrimination. There-fore, awaiting confirmation by longitudinalcohort studies that measure base rates of ex-posure to racial/ethnic discrimination, ourresults can be viewed as tentative evidencefor developmental differences in perceivingracial/ethnic discrimination.

Among adolescents who presumablyhave the necessary social cognitive struc-tures and worldviews, perceiving discrimina-tion is not rare, which supports the results ofsurvey research with adolescents (Fisher etal., 2000; Rumbaut, 1994; Wong, 1998).

However, our results cannot address the is-sue whether there is a tendency to minimizeperceiving discrimination, similar to whathas been obtained in experimental studies(Crocker, 1999; Crocker & Major, 1989), be-cause we do not have data on base rates ofexposure to discrimination.

Our results also suggest that perceivingdiscrimination is, to some degree, a risk fac-tor for poor mental health for both childrenand adolescents. But the negative associa-tions are not uniform. Although there werenegative associations with depression,teacher interaction stress, and all three di-mensions of the manifestations of stress,there were no significant differences in self-esteem, academic self-concept, or academicstress. Among adolescents, both perceivingand worrying about discrimination are riskfactors for lower global self-worth, but therewere no significant differences on any of theother subscales ultimately associated withdiscrimination. It could be that there is arelationship between the manifestations ofstress (physical, behavioral, and emotional)and the somaticization of Puerto Rican chil-dren in general (Crijnen, Achenbach, &Verhulst, 1999). This would also be consis-tent with the mothers’ significantly higherreports of behavioral adjustment for thosechildren who perceived discrimination. Onthe other hand, it could be that the childrenwith behavioral difficulties are treated “dif-ferently” by the teachers, which the childrenexperience as stress.

The negative impact of perceived dis-crimination needs to be placed in the con-text of generally positive mental healthenjoyed by both the children and the ado-lescents in the samples. Puerto Rican chil-dren and adolescents in these two commu-nity-based samples on average scored highon positive mental health indicators. Onlythose with greater experience with discrimi-nation in their lives had lower scores insome of the mental health indicators thandid their peers. That anxiety over being dis-criminated against is also, to some degree, arisk factor for poor mental health outcomeswas foreshadowed by the findings of Rum-

152 S Z A L A C H A E T A L .

baut (1994) and Steele (1997; Steele &Aronson, 1995).

In our two studies there are negative as-sociations between perceived discriminationand some measures of mental health, but wecannot establish a causal link between thetwo, as our data are cross-sectional. The lan-guage we use in connection with discrimina-tion as a risk factor for poor mental healthderives from the social interactionist per-spective of the social origins of self-identity.However, Phinney, Madden, and Santos(1998) have investigated whether psycho-logical variables can predict perceived ethnicdiscrimination among minority and immi-grant adolescents. Using cross-sectionaldata, they tested a model predicting per-ception of discrimination from self-esteem,mastery, depression/anxiety, intergroupcompetence, and ethnic identity, as wellas demographic variables. They found thathigher depression/anxiety scores and lowerintergroup competence predicted moreperceived discrimination. Self-esteem andmastery, in turn, predicted depression/anxiety and intergroup competence, respec-tively. Consequently, Phinney and her col-leagues argued that there are psychologicalfactors that predispose people to perceivediscrimination.

When our cross-sectional data are viewedfrom this point of view, it is possible to arguethat depression and school stress (amongthe children) and low global self-esteem andathletic competence (for the adolescents)are risk factors for perceiving discriminationor being worried about discrimination,rather than discrimination being a risk fac-tor for poor mental health. The question ofcausality cannot be resolved with our data,nor with the data Phinney and her col-leagues analyzed. To be able to assess wheth-er certain psychological deficits predispose aperson to perceive discrimination morereadily or frequently than similar others whoare in better mental health, one needs abase rate of exposure to discrimination witha longitudinal follow-up.

In conclusion, accounting for the possi-bility that such psychological factors as de-

pression, anxiety, and low self-esteem canpredispose children and adolescents to per-ceive discrimination, we propose a larger,reciprocal feedback loop model for examin-ing the relationship between perceived dis-crimination and mental health. We proposethat due either to significant early exposureor to a psychological predisposition (orboth), certain children will be more likely toperceive discrimination. (Moreover, thesesame psychological deficits may increase achild’s exposure to discrimination, as chil-dren tend to tease, taunt, and otherwise vic-timize vulnerable peers.) The perception ofdiscrimination will lead to lower mentalhealth, which, in turn, will increase the chil-dren’s likelihood of perceiving discrimina-tion, and the reciprocal feedback loopwould continue. This model would be in-complete without also incorporating othermediating/moderating factors such as eth-nic pride (Biggs, 1998; Wong, 1998), com-petence in getting along with others fromdifferent racial/ethnic groups (Phinney etal., 1998), and parental racial socialization(Johnson, 1988; Ward, 2000). Future re-search should not only establish baseline ex-posure to discrimination in a longitudinalstudy of discrimination but also incorporatethose factors that can ameliorate the nega-tive impact of perceived racial and ethnicdiscrimination.

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