This research focused on the role of the ethnic family background and ethnic socialization in the social cognitive development of ethnic identity in Mexican-American children. Aspects of a theoretical model of the socialization of ethnic identity were tested in forty-five 6- to 10-year-old children and their mothers. Individually administered scales assessed parental generation of migration; parental education; mothers' cultural orientation; mothers' teaching about Mexican culture, ethnic pride, and discrimination; Mexican objects in the home; and children's ethnic identity. As predicted, the socialization indices functioned as a mediator of the influence of ethnic family background on their children's ethnic identity.

Aspects of cognitive social learning, cognitive developmental, and self-system theories were integrated into a theoretical framework for the study of ethnic identity and its development in Mexican-American children. Two studies were conducted, one with preschool children attending Head Start, and another with elementary school children age 6 to 10 years. The second study incorporated methodological refinements based on the first study. The research was designed to assess an instrument for measurement of children's ethnic identity and to evaluate developmentalfeatures of the data. Parts of the theoretical model of ethnic identity and its components also were assessed. The children 's responses to an Ethnic Identitv Questionnaire showed age-related improvements that were consistent with the conceptual framework guiding the research.

Recently there has been concern over the need for mental health research within ethnic minority populations, particularly Hispanic populations. Although there has been research focusing upon the similarity of mental health problems among Hispanic and Anglo-American samples, the absence of information regarding the cross-ethnic measurement equivalence of the assessment tools used in these comparisons seriously limits the interpretability of these findings. The two reported studies were designed to (a) examine the cross-ethnic functional and scalar equivalence of several mental health measures by examining the interrelations of these mental health indicators and examining the regression equations using negative life events to predict mental health outcomes; and (b) compare several mental health indicators among Hispanic and Anglo-American 8- to 14-year-old children. Findings suggest considerable cross-ethnic functional and scalar equivalence for the measure of depression, conduct disorders, and negative life events. In addition, findings indicate that the Hispanic children scored higher in depression than did the Anglo-American children, but this difference could be a function of differences in SES. The reader is cautioned that the present samples included only English-speaking and primarily Mexican American children.

The literature on the development of social identities in children has largely adhered to a cognitive developmental framework. However, to date, there has been little or no direct empirical demonstration of cognitive developmental levels associated with age accounting for variations in the expression of social identities. The current study directly assessed this hypothesis within ethnic identity. Ethnic identity in school-age children was assessed with the components outlined by Bernal, Knight, Garza, Ocampo, and Cota (1990), whereas level of cognitive ability was measured with an adaptation of Piaget’s conservation and classification tasks. It was hypothesised that cognitive ability would account for age differences in the components of ethnic self-identification, ethnic constancy, and to a lesser extent, ethnic knowledge. The results demonstrated that level of cognitive ability did not account for the age differences in ethnic self-identification or ethnic constancy. However, they did account for differences in ethnic knowledge. It is possible that the age changes found in ethnic and other social identities may be caused by other age-related changes in development, such as changes in learning through socialisation. This would imply that other phenomena hypothesised to be caused by changes in cognitive ability, such as the development of in-group pride and prejudice in children, may be altered by changes in the way young children are socialised by familial and nonfamilial agents. Research on social identities may bene”t from a departure from cognitive developmental theory and from increased attention to other theories, such as socialisation theory, in understanding the development of ethnic identity and other social identities.

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