Gonzalez, Tulani (4/12) Perceived discrimination, coping strategy usage, and race related stress among African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans: The influence of worldviews and socioeconomic status(Joan Duncan, Ph.D.; Gary Kose, Ph.D.; Elizabeth Kudadjie, Ph.D.)
The current study examined the influence of worldviews and socioeconomic status on perceived discrimination, coping strategy usage and race related stress among African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans. It was hypothesized that worldview orientations, SES, coping strategy usage and perceived discrimination would be associated with levels of race related stress, and would differ among the two groups. The study also examined the relationship between worldview orientations and coping strategy usage. None of the three hypotheses were supported by the findings. Therefore, worldview orientations, SES, and coping strategy usage were not found to be associated with levels of race related stress. However, three exploratory questions were partially answered by the findings. Lifetime frequencies of perceived discrimination were found to be an important predictor of race related stress, ethnicity was found to be an important predictor of social support seeking, and ethnicity and vertical individualism were found to be important predictors of an avoidant coping strategy. Afro-Caribbean reported slightly higher levels of social support coping and avoidant coping when compared to African Americans; no additional ethnicity related differences were found. Future research might benefit from using a broader sample and a more complex definition of SES so as to help clarify the impact that these factors have on the effects of discrimination.
