Stephen Kulis: Research Projects in Brief

CULTURALLY-GROUNDED PARENTING INTERVENTION FOR URBAN AMERICAN INDIAN PARENTS

“Using CBPR to Adapt a Culturally-grounded Prevention Curriculum for Urban American Indian Parents,” 09/30/2010 – 07/31/2015
Sponsor: National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIH-NIMHD 1R01MD006110)
Purpose: American Indian (AI) families now living in urban areas experience disproportional health disparities associated with substance abuse and risky sexual behavior but few evidence-based prevention approaches exist to prevent health disparities among this rapidly growing population. Family disruption, stresses related to poverty and rural-to-urban migration, and loss of cultural and social connections frequently operate as pathways to adverse health outcomes among AI families. By strengthening family functioning (parental involvement, family support, parental monitoring, and parent-child communication), a parenting intervention can help parents strengthen culturally relevant parenting skills that promote their children's well-being and reduce their children’s risk of substance use and risky sexual behavior. The aims of the study are to create and test a culturally grounded parenting intervention for urban AI families through a modification of an existing prevention program, Families Preparing the Next Generation (FPNG). The adaptation will employ a Cultural Adaptation Model for adapting programs for new target populations in ways that increase cultural fit while maintaining fidelity to core components of the original program. The resulting prevention intervention will address the needs of an under-served group severely affected by health disparities, strengthen families and help them to avoid familial and individual dysfunction, and advance knowledge on effective translational research strategies for adapting prevention interventions for ethnically diverse families.
Activities: The intervention will be adapted, piloted, evaluated, culturally validated, revised accordingly, and tested in a randomized control trial (RCT) involving 600 families (300 intervention, 300 control) in partnership with the three largest urban Indian centers in Arizona. CBPR methods will be used to adapt the intervention, using feedback from focus groups of urban AI parents, AI professionals and prevention experts, and through close collaboration between the designers of the original intervention and staff of the urban Indian centers, thus increasing the capacity of those centers to provide future parenting interventions. In addition to testing the intervention's efficacy, we will assess whether and how the participants’ connection to native culture and identity influences the intervention’s effects, and whether changes in overall family functioning lead to specific parenting practices directed at reducing their children’s risk behaviors.

SOUTHWEST INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH CENTER (SIRC)

“Health Disparities Research at SIRC: Cultural Processes in Risk and Resiliency,” 09/30/2007 – 05/31/2012
Sponsor: National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIH-NIMHD)
Purpose: A 5- year, renewable grant establishing SIRC as a Center of Excellence for health disparities research.
Involves faculty and graduate research assistants from Sociology, Social Work, Psychology, Education, Justice Studies, Communications, Life Sciences and Nursing.
Activities include: two large scale randomized trials of prevention interventions; sponsorship of pilot research; community needs assessment through a Community Advisory Board comprised of representatives of over 20 state and local agencies; international Scientific Advisory Board; mentorship program for early career faculty fellows and doctoral student interns; methodological and other support for grant proposal production; and regular meetings of a Data Analysis Clinic, advanced Statistics Work Group, and Writer's Group led by an experienced journal editor.
Selected studies:

Living in Two Worlds: adaptation of the keepin’ it REAL model program of substance use prevention for urban American Indian youth, followed by a field trial of its efficacy (PIs: E.F. Brown and S. Kulis)
Families Preparing the Next Generation: development of a parent component to enhance the efficacy of keepin’ it REAL (F. Castro and F. Marsiglia, PIs).
Monterrey, Mexico study of cultural identity and youth drug use
Guanajuato, Mexico study of public health issues among youths in alternative high schools in rural and poor areas with little access to secondary education
Project Jalisco: a pilot test of the effectiveness of keepin’ it REAL in public middle schools in Guadalajara, Mexico
Latin American immigrant youth in Spain: cultural and social integration of youth from immigrant families

“Southwest Interdisciplinary Research Consortium,” 2002-2007
Sponsor: National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIH-NIDA)
Purpose: A five-year research infrastructure development grant to increase capacity at ASU for culturally grounded prevention research.

DRUG RESISTANCE STRATEGIES keepin' it REAL PROJECTS (DRS)

Sponsor: National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIH-NIDA)
DRS-3 (1997-2000) involved a randomized trial with over 7,000 Phoenix 7^th and 8^th graders testing the effectiveness of three culturally tailored and locally specific versions of a drug prevention curriculum, keepin' it REAL (Refuse, Explain, Avoid, Leave). The curriculum was developed through school ethnographies, teacher input and video production by local kids to identify and convey culturally grounded ways that kids successfully resist drug use. The curriculum is now a SAMSHA model program that has been adopted by school districts across the USA.
NEXT GENERATION (2001-2003) funded additional secondary data analysis of the DRS-3 data to identify social contexts that influence the effectiveness of the keepin' it REAL intervention, such as students' ethnicity and its cultural "match" to the implementer and content of the intervention, the students' acculturation status, and the social context in which they live, such as neighborhood crime and the ethnic, immigrant and socio-economic composition of their schools and neighborhoods.
DRS-4 (2003-2008) funded a new implementation of the keepin' it REAL intervention in Phoenix area schools with additional content addressing acculturation and developmental issues, and comparing interventions timed at 5^th versus 7^th grades.

ORGANIZATIONAL INFLUENCES ON EQUITY FOR WOMEN AND AFRICAN AMERICAN SCIENTISTS

Sponsors: National Science Foundation, Spencer Foundation, American Sociological Association (ASA), Pacific Sociological Association (PSA)
SDR STUDIES: Purpose: Secondary data analysis of longitudinal data from the NSF sponsored Survey of Doctoral Recipients, tracking the careers of around 60,000 U.S. doctoral scientists/engineers. Data on individual academic and career history, marital/familial status, publications, salary, rank and tenure was matched to characteristics of their academic employers and science disciplines to identify the sources of gender and racial inequities in academic recruitment and promotion. Addresses theoretical issues of:

the operation of internal and external labor markets in academia;
the role of institutionalized discrimination and statistical discrimination in occupational gender/racial segregation;
geographical constraints on women's academic careers;
doctoral labor supply and demand factors in the institutional and geographic locations of Black scientists.

EEO-6 STUDIES: Secondary data analysis of federal Equal Employment Opportunity reports from a complete census of U.S. colleges, using data on the racial and gender distribution of all college/university employees and recent hires. Addresses organizational factors in the degree of occupational segregation within academia of women/men and Blacks/Whites into different job levels (administrative, faculty, support, clerical, service).
WOMEN AND MINORITY SOCIOLOGISTS: Sponsored by the ASA and PSA and using a national sample of sociology departments, studies addressed gender inequities in top ranked departments, "double jeopardy" for minority women sociologists, and organizational factors in gender and ethnic/racial inequities for faculty and graduate students in Sociology.

INTERGENERATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS IN LATER LIFE

NATIONAL SURVEY OF FAMILIES AND HOUSEHOLDS Secondary data analysis of a nationally representation sample of about 10,000 households, examining the [non-] reciprocated services among older respondents and their adult children, and their impact on the quality of the relationship in working and middle class families.
INFORMAL & ORGANIZATIONAL SUPPORT OF THE ELDERLY Secondary data analysis of National Institute on Aging data from older parents and their child "helpers," addressing the kinds of help received from informal and formal sources and the bases of parent-child solidarity in later life.