Examining the role of culture-specific coping as a predictor of resilient outcomes in African Americans from high-risk urban communities (2007)
Investigators analyzed the responses to the questionnaires of 361 African Americans from two urban, northeast areas of the United States. They wanted to determine the role of culture-specific coping mechanisms on quality of life indicators (resilient outcomes) in this sample of people. According to Utsey et al., previous research showed that African Americans fare worse in many health indicators, in comparison to Whites. They also tell us that African Americans experience chronic racism and discrimination, which can exacerbate and contribute to pre-existing morbidity. Using a resilience model, the researchers looked at a series of risk factors (daily stress, life events, race-related stress), traditional factors (social support, family cohesion, adaptability, cognitive ability), culture-specific coping factors (cognitive/emotional regulation, spiritual coping, collective coping, ritual coping) and analyzed their effect on quality of life indicators (self-reported health outcomes).
Utsey et al. hypothesized that health outcomes would be predicted by coping mechanisms, above and beyond the effect of risk factors and traditional factors. They also believed that coping factors would be stronger predictors of health outcomes than traditional factors. Coping mechanisms had a significantly positive relationship with health outcomes, in addition to the positive relationship found between traditional factors and health outcomes. However, they found that cultural (coping) and traditional factors had an equally important effect on quality of life indicators.
Relevance to the documentary: The findings of this study suggest that a victim-centered intervention should focus on building coping mechanisms, specifically spiritual and collective coping. Because the education of society to the effects of discrimination is a long-term solution, it is essential that short-term interventions help to buffer negative health outcomes. More importantly, coping mechanisms that help to build and strengthen community could serve to protect against many other risk factors that contribute to poor health, by providing social capital that can alleviate stressors that are tied to a number of illnesses.
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