The study is sponsored by an African American professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Health named Mia Smith Bynum, Ph.D. She specializes in working with black children and their families.
2) Why is the study being done? To find out how parents help their children get ready to deal with issues about race, and to learn more about how black families deal with issues that are important for adolescents.
3) What kind of families are you looking for? We are looking for black mothers with a teenager between the ages of 14 and 17 living in the Washington DC/Baltimore metropolitan area. This includes married mothers, single mothers, aunties, or grandmothers or other female caregivers that have legal guardianship are eligible.
4) Where are you recruiting from in the Washington/Baltimore area? We are recruiting from the following areas:
a) Washington DC
b) Northern Virginia Cities & Counties: Alexandria, Arlington County, Fairfax County
c) Maryland: Anne Arundel County, Baltimore City, Baltimore County, Howard County, Prince George's County
5) Are fathers included in this study? Due to funding limitations, we are unable to recruit fathers for this study. Dr. Smith Bynum plans to do similar research with fathers in the future.
6) What do I have to do?
• Fill out a few questionnaires. They ask questions about your opinions on racial issues, parenting, self-esteem, mental health issues, and some background information, like age and job.
• Have parents and teenagers talk about two stories about a Black teenager. The conversations will be videotaped.
7) Why are they videotaping? What are they going to do with it? Videotaping is a common way family psychologists measure how family members interact with one another. When combined with the family’s answers to questionnaires, you get a full picture of the each family’s personality, i.e.ways of getting along, and solving problems. All of the information on the videotape is confidential and will not be viewed by anyone except the research team working with Dr. Smith Bynum unless you provide written permission. Also, all staff are trained research assistants who have had special training on how to protect confidentiality.
8) What will you do with the information? All information we collect is confidential. Each family will be assigned a family ID number so that your personal information is not on any of the questionnaires or videotapes. Questionnaire responses will be entered into a database and used to look for common themes across all family’s responses. We are interested in looking at the key themes across ALL families in the study.Family names or personal information will never be released to the public. The results of studies completed with families eventually end up published in the scientific literature. Again, the results will focus on averages across all families, not on information from individual families. From there, other psychologists, the media, lawmakers have access to the information. Dr. Smith Bynum hopes that the results of the study will be used to affect laws and public policy that relate to the quality of family life for minority adolescents and their families.
9) How long will it take? The study should take up to 2 hours.
10) What do I get out of this? Each family will receive monetary compensation for their time and participation
11) When will interviews be starting? Interviews are being conducted now! We hope to finish our interviews by July 31, 2011.
12) Where do I sign up?
• E-mail bpp2012terps@gmail.com
OR
• Call (301) 405-1406 and talk to one of our research assistants!
