This chapter provides a guide to research logistics and ethics in studying immigrant families. The authors outline major pragmatic issues in research design and data collection to which all scholars must attend, although current practices often do not respond to the idiosyncratic issues related to vulnerable immigrant populations (e.g., undocumented immigrants). The chapter presents vital procedures to ensure both the protection of research participants from immigrant backgrounds and validity of the data collected from them and seeks to be a source of reference for institutional review boards (IRBs). Specific issues addressed include navigating IRBs, informed consent, recruitment and sampling, and translation of instruments and interviews.

As North American youth move into adolescence, they encounter new types of peer relationships and more opportunities to interact with peers away from the watchful eyes of parents or other adults (Brown and Klute, 2003; Csikszentmihalyi and Larson, 1984). One consequence of these changes is that, to an increasing extent across adolescence, the information that parents obtain about their child' s peer relations comes primarily from what the child is willing to divulge (Kerr and Stattin, 2000). Among the factors likely to influence adolescents' decision about what they tell parents about their peers-and parent decisions about what information to solicit-is parental and adolescent beliefs about what parents ought to (or have a right to) know about peer relationships and interactions. These beliefs should reflect the quality of the parent-child bond, especially levels of trust and respect, and the parents' approach to parenting. Such beliefs may change in response to the child' s behavior or activities of the child' s associates. Misbehavior may heighten parental demands for information while redoubling adolescents' 67 5

Southeast Asian American (SEAA) adolescents and emerging adults navigate a multicultural, global world by utilizing cultural variability to play up and play down three cultural identities: their Asian/Asian American heritage culture, the White dominant culture in which they live, and a hip hop cultural identity. The latter is a unique cultural identity rooted in the global phenomenon of hip hop that includes dance, art, and music as well as resistance to the dominant, mainstream culture. Hip hop is a meaningful cultural identity for SEAA youth because it is a cultural identity transcendent of race/ethnicity, a means toward relational and identity harmony, a form of resistance, and because it facilitates belongingness to a local and a global community.

Using qualitative interview data gathered from 28 Hmong adolescents, we examined the meaning ascribed to language and style and how language and style behaviors are used to distinguish identity. We found that the participants used language and style to define their own ethnic group membership and cultural identities. Moreover they inferred meaning from these identity behaviors to discern which peer groups are desirable (those who wear American style clothing and are bilingual) and which are of low social status (“fobby” style clothing and monolingual). The cultural identity symbols used by participants reveal heterogeneity among Hmong adolescent peer groups and evolving definitions of what it means to be Hmong in America.

Ethnic minority and majority individuals make daily adjustments to play up and play down the influence of cultural identity on their social interactions and behaviors, and these adjustments predict interpersonal well-being. Cultural influence and cultural variability contribute to our emerging understanding of cultural identity as dynamic and agentic. (PsycINFO Database Record