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Abstract The purpose of this study was to examine instructional and cultural supports that school stakeholders used to meet the needs of high school Black males participating in an academy of engineering. Based on interviews, three themes emerged: (a) representation matters—culturally responsive caring adults and role models; (b) teaching navigational life skills; and (c) targeted culturally responsive supports (or lack thereof). These factors promoted a culture conducive for engaging Black males and cultivated their success.
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Ethnographic Methods for Identifying Cultural Concepts of Distress: Developing Reliable and Valid Measures
We review ethnographic methods that allow researchers to assess distress in a culturally sensitive manner. We begin with an overview of standardized biomedical and psychological approaches to assessing distress cross-culturally. We then focus on literature describing the development of reliable and valid culturally sensitive assessment tools that can serve as complements or alternatives to biomedical categories and diagnostic frameworks. The methods we describe are useful in identifying forms of suffering—expressed in culturally salient idioms of distress—that might be misidentified by biomedical classifications. We highlight the utility of a cognitive anthropological theoretical approach for developing measures that attend to local cultural categories of knowledge and experience. Attending to cultural insider perspectives is necessary because expressions of distress, thresholds of tolerance for distress, expectations about stress inherent in life, conceptions of the good life, symptom expression, and modes of help-seeking vary across cultures.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2017491
- PAR ID:
- 10428669
- Publisher / Repository:
- SAGE Publications
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Field Methods
- Volume:
- 35
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 1525-822X
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: p. 175-197
- Size(s):
- p. 175-197
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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