Protective factors affecting low-income urban African American youth exposed to stress

Individual (coping strategies), family (parent/child relationships), and co mmunity-based (religious involvement) variables were examined as potential protective factors for 224 low-income urban sixth- through eighth-grade Afr ican American adolescents. Each of those variables was examined as a modera tor and analyses were conducted to determine whether the association betwee n stress and psychological symptoms was attenuated for youth endorsing posi tive coping strategies, strong parent/child relationships, and religious in volvement. Results indicated that positive relationships with father figure s buffered the effects of stress on externalizing symptoms for boys and for girls; religious involvement was protective for girls bur not for boys. Th e sole coping strategy to demonstrate a protective effect was avoidant copi ng, 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 copin g accentuated the relation between daily hassles and internalizing symptoms for girls.