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Race, Culture, and Ethnicity: Implications for a Community Intervention

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Abstract

We present an overview of research on African American families and emphasize in this discussion limitations of approaches used in the past to study African American families. We also discuss and identify challenges for designing and implementing community, family-based programs targeting competence-promoting behaviors in African American families. In addition, we attempt to accomplish the following objectives: (1) identify themes in studies of African American families, including bias in prior research; (2) discuss ways in which prior approaches and conceptual models guiding studies of African Americans have created challenges for the development and implementation of community-based intervention and research programs; and (3) present the Parents Matter! Program as an example of a community-based prevention effort that attempted to overcome many of the challenges created by prior research efforts.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Family Research, University of Georgia, Athens, GA

    Velma M. Murry (Professor of Child and Family Development and Co-Director)

  2. Psychology Department, Loyola College in Maryland, Baltimore, MD

    Beth A. Kotchick (Assistant Professor)

  3. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA

    Scyatta Wallace (Research Fellow)

  4. Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA

    Bethany Ketchen (Graduate Research Assistant)

  5. Parents Matter! Program, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, AR

    Kenya Eddings (Project Coordinator)

  6. Parents Matter! Program, University of Georgia, Athens, GA

    Laurie Heller (Project Coordinator)

  7. Parents Matter! Program, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, AR

    Ida Collier (Facilitator)

Authors
  1. Velma M. Murry
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  2. Beth A. Kotchick
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  3. Scyatta Wallace
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  4. Bethany Ketchen
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  5. Kenya Eddings
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  6. Laurie Heller
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  7. Ida Collier
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Correspondence to Velma M. Murry.

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Murry, V.M., Kotchick, B.A., Wallace, S. et al. Race, Culture, and Ethnicity: Implications for a Community Intervention. Journal of Child and Family Studies 13, 81–99 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:JCFS.0000010492.70526.7d

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