Institute on Race and Ethnicity- Category A (Research)

René Antrop-González, UW-Milwaukee
Uriel Cohen, UW-Milwaukee
Ray Hutchison, UW-Green Bay
Sunwoong Kim, UW-Milwaukee
Susie Lamborn, UW-Milwaukee
Jeffrey Lewis, UW-Madison
Lisa Nakamura, UW-Madison
Diane Reddy, UW-Milwaukee
Doris Slesinger, UW-Madison
Stephen Quintana, UW-Madison

René Antrop-González, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, UW-Milwaukee - "Voices of Color in National Small High School Reform: A Pilot Study for an Extramural Funding Seed Project."
Major efforts are under way to fund and contribute to the dismantling of large comprehensive high schools by empowering communities of color across the U.S. to create small high schools that fit their sociopolitical and political needs. The pilot study will document and describe the student and teacher-based experiences of those involved in small high school efforts in Milwaukee, Boston, Orlando, and New York City through the collection of documents and focus group interviews. The primary question will be: According to stakeholders (i.e., students of color, teachers, community members, etc.) involved in small high school reform movement in these cities, what types of academic, social, and/or institutional factors are attributed to academic achievement and engagement in small school reform?

Uriel Cohen, School of Architecture and Urban Planning, UW-Milwaukee, "Ethnic and Cultural Factors as Contributing to Active Living."
This applied research project will address significant contemporary problems of the aged: sedentary lifestyle, lack of exercise, and associated health risks. The project will focus on ethnic and cultural assets as an opportunity for overcoming barriers to older persons' active living (AL). The goal of the project will be to examine AL among urban older African American women and Spanish/Latin American women. The methodology will include questionnaires to assess self-reported AL, attitudes toward AL, and perceived personal and physical environmental characteristics that are correlated with AL. Accelerometers will be used to objectively measure AL among selected participants.

Ray Hutchison, Urban and Regional Studies, UW-Green Bay, "Cultural Change and Continuity in the Hmong Culture."
In FY 1989-90, Professor Hutchison received a grant from the Institute to conduct research on the Hmong community in Green Bay. Since then, many of the children from households that were interviewed have completed their education and have married and begun their own families. In some cases, they have entered professional careers and have become leaders in the local Hmong community. Funding will support a ten-year follow-up study, interviewing a 50% sample of Hmong households using an updated version of the original survey instrument. Interviews will be conducted in Hmong by native Hmong speakers. Results will be used to update the earlier monograph Acculturation in the Hmong Community, producing the first longitudinal study of a Hmong community.

Sunwoong Kim, Department of Economics, UW-Milwaukee, "Mortgage Lending Discrimination Against Black Neighborhoods in the Milwaukee Metropolitan Area."
This study will use Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data between 1990 and 1999 to find out if there have been redlining practices against black neighborhoods in the Milwaukee metropolitan area. Instead of one global parameter in the logit model used as the evidence of redlining in the previous studies, this study incorporates local variation of the parameter estimating the relationship between the racial composition variable and the loan denial probability variable. It is expected that the incorporation of local context into the existing redlining models may help delineate implicitly redlined neighborhoods in the last decade.

Susie Lamborn, Department of Psychology, UW-Milwaukee - "Ethnic Socialization Practices: Supporting Self Regulation and Academic Competence During High School."
Two hundred ethnically diverse high school students will complete a survey on self regulation; school attitudes and performance; and perceptions of mainstream, cultural and minority socialization. Schools and teens will provide information on school performance, and a subset of sixty students will complete individual interviews on ethnic socialization practices. The study will address three question: (1) What are the self-regulatory skills of ethnic teens?; (2) What are the socialization practices encountered by ethnic teens for mainstream, cultural, and minority experiences?; and (3) What are the linkages among family socialization practices, self-regulatory skills, and academic competence for ethnic teens?

Jeffrey Lewis, Department of Human Development and Family Studies, UW-Madison - "African-American Boys' Academic Identities and School Behaviors: The Influence of School Social Networks."
This study will examine how African-American boys develop identities as learners, attitudes toward school, and academic behaviors during a critical transition period (grades 3-5). Social network theory and social capital theory suggest that home, school, and peer environments are overlapping, mutually influencing sites of identity formation, attitudes and behaviors. Guided by these theories, the proposed study will pilot a survey that will identify how beliefs, social and cultural practices, and other experiences embedded within students' social networks promote or discourage African-American boys' positive academic identity formation, motivation to learn, and constructive behaviors and attitudes toward school.

Lisa Nakamura, Department of Communication Arts, UW-Madison - "Visual Cultures of the Internet."
This research will engage specifically with depictions of race in new media such as graphical sports and role playing games like the Sims and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, the use of racialized graphical avatars as AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) buddies in Instant Messenger applications, and support websites for parents. Findings will fill a void since there is no book yet extant on this topic that has a central interest in the matter of race, gender, and identity online, and the ways in which images of racial and gender difference on the Internet prevent democratic interaction and the promotion of a virtual public sphere.

Diane Reddy, Department of Psychology, and Anne Mary Montero (doctoral student), UW-Milwaukee - "Decreasing Loss to Follow-up Care After an Abnormal Pap Result: Impact of Beliefs, Emotions, and Knowledge on African American, Caucasian, and Hispanic Non- Adherence."
This research will investigate the factors contributing to the lack of follow-up after abnormal Pap smears in African American, Caucasian and Hispanic women below the poverty level who did not return to clinics after notification of abnormal results. The objective is to obtain comprehensive data for ethnicity via survey, identifying the critical factors affecting loss to follow-up within each group. Responses of age and ethnicity matched women to a similar survey will serve as a basis for comparison. A longterm goal is to develop and evaluate ethnically sensitive interventions for each ethnicity based on the findings from this project.

Doris Slesinger, Department of Rural Sociology, UW-Madison, and E. Howard Grigsby, Department of Sociology, UW-Whitewater - "African Americans in Wisconsin, 2000: A Statistical Portrait."
This project will produce a new, updated edition of "African Americans in Wisconsin: A Statistical Overview," which was based on the 1990 Census. It will cover demographic, economic, educational and housing data, as well as criminal justice statistics and health indicators. In addition to the U.S. Census, sources will include the Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services, and the Department of Corrections, among others. The book will include statistics, graphs, charts, and descriptive paragraphs, and will present comparisons with 1980 and 1990 data. The 1990-based publication has been extremely useful in classrooms, libraries, and state agencies, as well as to many community agencies.

Stephen Quintana, Department of Counseling Psychology, UW-Madison - "Among Friends: Youth's Interracial Competence."
In previous research interviews, youth have described difficulties forming interracial friendships, despite the desire for more interracial contact. Barriers to these friendships include interracial prejudice and, within a race, pressure against forming interracial relationships. The purpose of this project is to identify the characteristics associated with those middle-school youth who have navigated those barriers and successfully formed interracial friendships. The research will addresses two questions: (1) Who are the youth with the competence and interest to develop interracial friendships, and (2) What skills and characteristics are associated with these youth? Both a qualitative study and a longitudinal quantitative study will be conducted.