Recent Cross-Ethnic Research on the Adolescent

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to summarize cross-ethnic research on the adolescent which has appeared in the literature during the past eighteen years (1960 to date). For this search, adolescence has been arbitrarily defined as embracing youth between thirteen and eighteen years of age. Thus, those studies have been included in this summary which reported having youths of this age group in the research population even though the total population may have included other ages. This report is further restricted to those studies which provide cross-ethnic data, specifically, comparative data between black and white Americans. I have excluded studies with an ethnically or racially homogeneous population, even in those cases where similar studies based on another ethnic group may exist, thus making cross-ethnic comparisons possible. The intention has been to include all disciplines and research methodologies. Forty-four studies have been identified as falling within the limitations outlined above. These have been placed in ten topic categories which comprise the principal subdivisions of this summary.