Individual (coping strategies), family (parent/child relationships), and community-based (religious involvement) variables were examined as potential protective factors for 224 low-income urban sixth-through eighth-grade African American adolescents. Each of those variables was examined as a moderator, and analyses were conducted to determine whether the association between stress and psychological symptoms was attenuated for youth endorsing positive coping strategies, strong parent/child relationships, and religious involvement. Results indicated that positive relationships with father figures buffered the effects of stress on externalizing symptoms for boys and for girls; religious involvement was protective for girls but not for boys. The sole coping strategy to demonstrate a protective effect was avoidant coping, which attenuated the relation between stress and externalizing symptoms for boys. Supplemental analyses focusing on specific subsets of stressful experiences indicated that avoidant coping and social support-seeking coping accentuated the relation between daily hassles and internalizing symptoms for girls.

African-American youth residing in urban poverty have been shown to be at increased risk for exposure to violence and internalizing symptoms, but there has been little investigation of moderating processes that might attenuate or exacerbate this association. The current study examined nondisclosure as a possible moderator of the association between community violence and internalizing symptoms with a sample of 152 low-income urban African-American early adolescents using hierarchical regression analyses. Results revealed that nondisclosure for relationship reasons (e.g., adults could not be trusted to provide needed support) moderated the association between exposure to community violence and internalizing symptoms. Unexpectedly, however, results of simple effects analyses revealed a stronger association between exposure to violence and internalizing symptoms for youth who disclosed more to adults. Although unexpected, this pattern builds upon prior research indicating that adult-child relationships are compromised within the context of urban poverty and that protective factors may lose their power under conditions of extreme stress.

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The current review outlines the implications of mesosystem measurement for ecological research and models of collaborative care. Existing approaches to single and multiple mesosystem measurement emphasizing adolescent and family ecological literature are described and critiqued. Ways in which collaborative health care relationships can be assessed across mesosystem dimensions are illustrated, and relevant measurement strategies from multiple dis-ciplines are considered. Coordinated efforts are called for to preserve the integrity of the construct and to systematically develop mesosystem measures emphasizing theory, grounded research, sound test construction, and cultural considerations.

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