Journal of Youth and Adolescence - 2021 Emerging Scholar Best Article Award
The editors of the Journal of Youth and Adolescence have named Josefina Bañales as the 2021 recipient of its Emerging Scholar Best Article Award for her article entitled “The Development of Ethnic-Racial Identity Process and Its Relation to Civic Beliefs among Latinx and Black American Adolescents”. Dr. Bañales is an Assistant Professor in the Community and Prevention Research Area at the University of Illinois, Chicago (UIC). Her research examines how youth develop beliefs, feelings, and actions that challenge racism (i.e., youth critical racial consciousness development). Her co-authors were Adam J. Hoffman (now at Cornell University) Deborah Rivas-Drake (University of Michigan) and Robert J. Jagers (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning ).
Her article notes that, despite associations between ethnic-racial identity processes and positive psychosocial outcomes among adolescents, limited empirical research investigated longitudinal associations between these processes and civic beliefs. To address this gap in the literature, her research examined how two important dimensions of ethnic-racial identity -- exploration and resolution – changed across the middle school years predicted civic beliefs among adolescents. Participants included 400 Latinx (n = 121; 47.1% girls) and Black American (n = 279; 52.0% girls) adolescents in the 6th (n = 210), 7th (n = 113) and 8th Grades (n = 74). The study revealed that neither initial levels nor changes in ethnic-racial identity exploration predicted civic beliefs across four time-points of the study, or across two years of middle school. The findings were quite different for identity resolution. Adolescents who demonstrated greater increases in ethnic-racial identity resolution across two years of middle school were likely to have greater civic beliefs by the end of the two years, as compared to adolescents who had smaller increases in resolution. The findings suggest that adolescents who have an increasingly clear sense of their ethnic-racial selves may have greater access to cognitive and socioemotional resources that promote their development of beliefs on the need to advance the well-being of their communities.
The journal’s editors view receiving the award as a considerably distinctive accomplishment. The journal publishes 12 issues per year, each typically containing about 16 manuscripts. In addition, it is notable that, every year, fewer and fewer first authors are emerging scholars. Although fewer emerging scholars qualify to be considered, this shift in authorship has not reduced the competitiveness of the award. In fact, these developments actually have made the process even more competitive for emerging scholars, as they have increased competition to get published in the first place.
The Journal of Youth and Adolescence provides a single, high-level medium of communication for psychologists, psychiatrists, biologists, criminologists, educators, and professionals in many other allied disciplines who address the subject of youth and adolescence.
Read the winning article “The Development of Ethnic-Racial Identity Process and Its Relation to Civic Beliefs among Latinx and Black American Adolescents”. (this opens in a new tab)