Elsevier

Journal of School Psychology

Volume 38, Issue 5, September–October 2000, Pages 407-422
Journal of School Psychology

General article
Intra- and Extracultural Perceptions of Competence in Rural African American Youth

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-4405(00)00033-9Get rights and content

Abstract

This study was designed to determine the extent to which adults' ratings of cognitive and social competence among rural African American children converge. Hypotheses about the conditions under which intracultural and extracultural raters perceive children's competencies similarly were also tested. Mothers, fathers, relatives, family friends, and teachers independently assessed cognitive and social competence for a sample of 91 rural African American children. The data supported predictions that ratings of cognitive competence would be more similar across raters than would ratings of social competence, and that parents' involvement in their children's schools would be associated with more similarity in parents' and teachers' ratings of child competence. Identification of the processes that help African American children to function well in both intracultural and extracultural settings is important.

Section snippets

Participants

To compare ratings between parents and analyze the effects of parental gender on ratings of child cognitive and social competence, 91 African American families with married parents and a 9- to 12-year-old first born child (48 female, 42 male) were recruited for participation in the study. As children grow, their selection of social references moves from within the family to peers and other outside agents. Because this study focuses on intrafamilial perceptions, preadolescents were chosen as the

Correlations Among Intracultural Raters

Table 1 presents the means and standard deviations for each rater's assessment of children's cognitive and social competence. Table 2 presents the correlations among mothers', fathers', relatives', family friends', and teachers' cognitive and social competence ratings, and Table 3 presents the results of significance tests of the means presented in Table 1. The correlations among intracultural raters' assessments of cognitive competence all attained statistical significance, but a different

Discussion

The present findings refine the results of previous studies on the similarity of social agents' perceptions of children. Whereas prior research has investigated the relationship between social agents' (typically mothers' and teachers') ratings of problem behaviors, the present study focused on ratings of competence in cognitive and social domains. A particular goal of this study was to identify the conditions under which ratings from different social agents who interact with African American

Acknowledgements

The research reported in this paper was supported by grants from the Spencer Foundation and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The authors would like to give special recognition to Dr. Joseph Wisenbaker, School of Professional Studies, for assistance with statistical analyses included in this report.

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