Building Community and Increasing Access: One @latinaras Tweet at a Time

The state of Afrolatinxs in Latinx psychological research: Findings from a content analysis from 2009 to 2020.

“…We support previous recommendations by scholars (Liang et al, 2009; Mazzula & Serrata, 2017) to disaggregate the terms Latinx or Hispanic when discussing people of Latinx origin in general and AfroLatinxs specifically, including any other racial terms. Not doing so continues to feed a system that, whether directly or indirectly, supports racial hierarchies, the dichotomy of race, and the marginalization of AfroLatinxs.…”

“…We recommend utilizing tools and measures that capture race-based approaches to conducting research. We support and recommend the race-based research framework to understand the state of the literature, which has documented inclusion criteria for racial and ethnic minority populations, and recommendations for incorporating identity (e.g., racial identity and ethnic identity; Carter, 1995; Mazzula & Serrata, 2017). The race-based paradigm maintains that racism continues to play a significant role in the distribution of access, opportunity, and resources in American society and that American society was and remains structured around racial divisions (Carter & Pieterse, 2020).…”

“…Taken together, these studies, which span nearly four decades of published research across more than 30 different journals, indicated that while reporting sample demographics has increased over time, the proportion of articles in which the race or ethnicity of study samples are reported remains relatively low, and is exceptionally low when studying Latinx populations (Arredondo et al, 2005; Case & Smith, 2000; Delgado-Romero et al, 2005; Graham, 1992; Hunt et al, 2000; Iwamasa et al, 2002; Mazzula & Serrata, 2017; Nilsson et al, 2003; Ponterotto, 1988, Yoon et al, 2011). In addition, there is a gap in existing content analyses with Latinx-focused journals that document the state of the field related to understanding the inclusion of AfroLatinxs.…”

“…Over the past two and a half decades, several scholars, across various psychology specialty areas, have conducted content analyses focused, primarily, on the numerical representation of racial or ethnic minority populations (see Carter & Forsyth, 2007; Delgado-Romero et al, 2005). A handful of content analyses have focused on the use of race in publications (e.g., Carter et al, 1998; Carter & Forsyth, 2007), and fewer have included Latinx populations (e.g., Arredondo et al, 2005; Delgado-Romero et al, 2005, 2017; Liang et al, 2009; Mazzula & Serrate, 2017). For example, Arredondo et al (2005) investigated the extent to which articles advanced “Multicultural Counseling Competencies.” They found that nearly 40% of the articles continued to describe ethnic minority populations in very general terms and that ethnic group characteristics were lower for Latinx (9%) compared to that of African Americans (21%) and European Americans (16%).…”

“…To our knowledge, Mazzula and Serrata (2017) published the first content analysis to examine race-related factors in studies with Latinx populations. The content analysis reviewed published studies across counseling psychology (The Counseling Psychologist, Journal of Counseling Psychology ), clinical-psychology ( Journal of Applied Psychology ), and clinical-forensic psychology journals ( Behavioral Science and the Law, Criminal Justice and Behavior, and Law and Human Behavior ; total N = 3,702 from 1999 to 2015).…”