{n “title”: “Teenager Experience of Racial Socialization (TERS)”,n “content”: “
Abstract
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The Teenager Experience of Racial Socialization (TERS) is an empirically validated psychometric instrument developed by Dr. Howard C. Stevenson and colleagues (Stevenson et al., 1996, 2001, 2002) to assess the frequency and qualitative nature of race-related messages that African American and Black adolescents receive from parents, caregivers, and extended kinship networks. While early racial socialization literature predominantly relied on parental self-reports, the TERS was formulated specifically to capture the adolescent\’s subjective appraisal and cognitive perception of these communications. Comprising 40 items evaluated on a 3-point frequency response format (1 = Never, 2 = A few times, 3 = Lot of times), the scale delineates five primary first-order dimensions: Cultural Coping with Antagonism (CCA), Cultural Pride Reinforcement (CPR), Cultural Appreciation of Legacy (CAL), Cultural Alertness to Discrimination (CAD), and Cultural Endorsement of the Mainstream (CEM). Additionally, the instrument yields two overarching higher-order composite indices: the Proactive Racial Socialization Experience (PRSE), summarizing affirmative cultural transmission and preparation for bias, and the Adaptive Racial Socialization Experience (ARSE), representing the comprehensive systemic transmission of survival and adaptation strategies.
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Psychometric evaluations across community and longitudinal intervention cohorts (e.g., the Fast Track Project) indicate robust reliability and structural validity. Internal consistency estimates across subscales range from moderate to excellent: CCA (α = .85–.89), CPR (α = .81–.83), CAL (α = .73–.77), CAD (α = .76–.81), and CEM (α = .64–.71), while composite indices demonstrate exceptional internal consistency (PRSE α = .92–.94; ARSE α = .93–.94). Confirmatory factor analyses support the multidimensional architecture, demonstrating satisfactory model fit across urban and non-urban adolescent populations. Construct and predictive validity studies show that TERS dimensions differentially buffer against institutional and interpersonal discrimination, foster academic engagement, mitigate internalizing symptoms, and promote healthy ethnic-racial identity resolution. The TERS remains a foundational assessment tool in developmental psychology, multicultural education, pediatric clinical psychology, and family research.
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Keywords
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Teenager Experience of Racial Socialization, TERS, racial socialization, African American adolescents, Black youth development, ethnic-racial identity, cultural coping, preparation for bias, racial discrimination, psychometrics
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Authors
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The Teenager Experience of Racial Socialization scale was conceptualized, developed, and validated through the sustained scholarship of Dr. Howard C. Stevenson and his collaborative research team at the University of Pennsylvania:
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- Howard C. Stevenson, Ph.D. — Constance Clayton Professor of Urban Education and Professor of Africana Studies, Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania; Director of the Racial Empowerment Collaborative (REC). Dr. Stevenson is a clinical psychologist whose research focuses on racial literacy, racial stress negotiation, and family-based developmental interventions.
- Ronald Cameron, Ph.D. — Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania; specialized in adolescent social-emotional development and ethnic minority mental health.
- Teresa Herrero-Taylor, Ph.D. — Researcher and clinical child psychologist examining adolescent risk and protective factors within multicultural educational settings.
- Gwendolyn Y. Davis, Ph.D. — Developmental psychologist collaborating on adolescent racial socialization models, family dynamics, and measurement design.
- Collaborating contributors to initial scale formulations: Jacqueline Reed, Ph.D., and Phyllis Bodison, Ph.D., who co-developed foundational iterations evaluating kinship support and adolescent belief structures (Stevenson, Reed, & Bodison, 1996).
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Purpose
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The primary purpose of the Teenager Experience of Racial Socialization (TERS) is to quantify the frequency and multidimensional content of racial socialization communications delivered to Black youth from the explicit perspective of the youth themselves. For decades, developmental psychology relied heavily on parent-report inventories to assess ethnic-racial socialization (such as parental proactive teaching, cultural transmission, and racial barrier warnings). However, substantial discrepancies exist between parental intention and adolescent perception. Because developmental outcomes such as self-concept, emotional regulation, and stress negotiation depend on cognitive appraisals formed by the youth, measuring the adolescent’s received experience is vital for diagnostic accuracy and intervention design.
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From a theoretical rationale, racial socialization is not a monolithic, unidirectional transfer of cultural heritage; rather, it is a sophisticated coping ecosystem. Black youths in racially stratified societies are tasked with negotiating dual realities: mastering the skills necessary to excel within mainstream, Eurocentric social institutions while cultivating an unapologetic affirmation of their Black identity and developing vigilance toward systemic antagonism. The TERS was engineered to isolate these distinct communication channels, enabling researchers and clinicians to assess whether an adolescent receives a balanced repertoire of protective racial socialization or whether specific dimensions (such as alertness to discrimination without corresponding pride reinforcement) are over- or under-represented.
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In clinical, community, and pediatric psychiatric applications, the TERS serves as a diagnostic screening tool to map an adolescent’s psychosocial resources. For instance, clinicians working with African American adolescents presenting with anxiety, depressive symptomatology, or behavioral difficulties in academic environments can utilize the TERS to evaluate whether minority stress is being buffered by familial cultural coping mechanisms. In research contexts, the TERS has been deployed in major longitudinal investigations, such as the Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group’s Fast Track Project, to assess how ethnic-racial socialization processes mediate the relationships between community disadvantage, structural bias, school achievement, and juvenile justice diversion.
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Psychological Construct
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The psychological construct operationalized by the TERS is racial socialization experience—defined as the developmental and familial communication process through which youth acquire verbal and non-verbal transmissions regarding the history, cultural traditions, social expectations, spiritual fortitude, and structural barriers associated with their racial membership within a racially stratified society. Rather than conceptualizing racial socialization as a single continuous variable, the TERS models it as a multifaceted behavioral and ideological matrix composed of five first-order factors and two overarching composite dimensions.
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1. Cultural Coping with Antagonism (CCA)
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This subscale assesses the frequency of messages emphasizing spiritual resilience, extended kinship solidarity, institutional collectivism, and cultural pride as direct counter-strategies against environmental hostility. Drawing from West African cultural retentions and historical African American coping traditions, CCA encompasses messages highlighting the role of the Black church or mosque, spiritual reliance on God, extended family functioning, and culturally responsive pedagogy. An example includes hearing that “Depending on religion and God will help you live a good life” (Item 19) or that “Relatives can help Black parents raise their children” (Item 5). CCA equips adolescents with communal and transcendent coping mechanisms when personal agency alone is insufficient to address societal barriers.
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2. Cultural Pride Reinforcement (CPR)
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Cultural Pride Reinforcement focuses on the overt cultivation of self-worth, positive racial identity, perseverance, and dignity anchored in Black identity. It measures messages that counteract dominant societal deficit narratives by teaching youth to take pride in their skin color, physical appearance, and individual capabilities. It also encapsulates messages regarding educational attainment as a primary tool of empowerment, and the vital necessity of bicultural competence—learning how to thrive in both White-dominated environments and Black communities. Exemplars include messages such as “You should be proud to be Black” (Item 9) and “You need to learn how to live in a White world and a Black world” (Item 32).
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3. Cultural Appreciation of Legacy (CAL)
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This dimension measures transmissions centered on historical continuity, ancestral perseverance, and historical literacy. CAL emphasizes that the adolescent is connected to an unbroken line of historical strength, spanning ancient African civilizations through the resistance against American slavery. Crucially, CAL frames understanding systemic oppression not as a source of defeatism, but as a vital intellectual and survival mandate. Representative items include “Black slavery is important never to forget” (Item 4) and “Knowing your African heritage is important for your survival” (Item 14).
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4. Cultural Alertness to Discrimination (CAD)
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Often termed “preparation for bias” in broader developmental literature, CAD captures explicit communications regarding the realities of institutional racism, racial profiling, double standards in achievement, and interpersonal harassment. This dimension measures messages that demystify racial inequality, warning adolescents that they will likely face bias regardless of their personal character. By preemptively socializing adolescents to expect systemic injustice—such as hearing that “You have to work twice as hard as whites in order to get ahead in this world” (Item 28) and “A Black child or teenager will be harassed just because s/he is Black” (Item 35)—CAD protects youth from internalizing external hostility as individual failure.
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5. Cultural Endorsement of the Mainstream (CEM)
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The CEM subscale quantifies messages that reflect assimilationist philosophies, color-blind racial ideology, or the belief in meritocratic fairness within dominant Eurocentric institutions. Items on this subscale assess communications suggesting that American society is fair, that integration into predominantly white educational spaces automatically enhances self-worth, or that dwelling on race is counterproductive. Illustrative items include “American society is fair toward Black people” (Item 1) and “Too much talk about racism will keep you from reaching your goals in life” (Item 17). In psychometric modeling, CEM often exhibits divergent relational patterns compared to the proactive and protective dimensions.
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Composite Dimensions: PRSE and ARSE
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To facilitate systemic research hypotheses, the TERS offers two macro-constructs:
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- Proactive Racial Socialization Experience (PRSE): Formed by aggregating the CCA, CPR, CAL, and CAD subscales. PRSE reflects the affirmative, culturally anchored, and bias-prepared socialization spectrum that actively buffers against discrimination.
- Adaptive Racial Socialization Experience (ARSE): The omnibus composite incorporating all 40 items (including CEM). ARSE reflects the comprehensive totality of race-related communications an adolescent must synthesize while formulating adaptive behavioral strategies in diverse social domains.
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Theoretical Framework
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The development of the TERS is grounded in integrative developmental and multicultural psychological paradigms, primarily formulated around Howard C. Stevenson’s Racial Encounter Coping Appraisal and Socialization Theory (RECAST), alongside Margaret Beale Spencer’s Phenomenological Variant of Ecological Systems Theory (PVEST), and the foundational conceptual models of Boykin and Toms (1985).
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1. Stevenson’s RECAST Model
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Stevenson’s RECAST framework posits that racial socialization serves as an emotional, cognitive, and behavioral protective shield. According to RECAST, racially hostile encounters act as acute stressors that elicit physiological arousal, cognitive vulnerability, and emotional fatigue. If an adolescent lacks racial literacy and racial coping efficacy, these encounters can prompt maladaptive reactions, including aggressive reactivity or internalized learned helplessness. Within this model, familial racial socialization acts as an upstream inoculation. By repeatedly hearing messages categorized under CCA, CPR, CAL, and CAD, adolescents build a reservoir of cognitive reappraisal strategies. Consequently, when confronted with a discriminatory episode, the youth appraises the event not through personal deficit lenses, but through an enlightened historical and systemic framework, allowing for focused, adaptive problem-solving.
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2. Phenomenological Variant of Ecological Systems Theory (PVEST)
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Spencer’s PVEST model expands Bronfenbrenner’s ecological framework by emphasizing phenomenology—how individuals perceive, interpret, and assign meaning to their ecological contexts. PVEST delineates five cyclical components: net vulnerability, net stress engagement, reactive coping mechanisms, emergent identity processes, and life-stage outcomes. The TERS directly captures the reactive and proactive socialization processes embedded within the youth’s microsystem (family and kinship networks). These communications assist the adolescent in balancing net vulnerability (structural racism, stereotyping) and net stress engagement, thereby guiding the emergence of a stable, resilient racial identity.
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3. The Tripartite Socialization Framework of Boykin & Toms
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A. Wade Boykin and Brenda A. Toms (1985) proposed that African American parenting must simultaneously navigate three distinct sociocultural realities: (a) participation in mainstream American culture (promoting academic and economic competencies), (b) socialization into Black cultural modalities (communalism, spirituality, rhythm, verve, oral tradition), and (c) socialization as an oppressed minority (preparation for bias and protective vigilance). The TERS directly operationalizes this tripartite matrix: CEM maps onto mainstream socialization; CCA, CPR, and CAL capture Black cultural modalities and historical legacy; and CAD captures minority status socialization and defensive vigilance.
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Validity
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The construct, convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity of the TERS has been established through extensive psychometric testing across urban and suburban adolescent cohorts.
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Construct and Content Validity
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Content validity was initially secured through rigorous item generation derived from qualitative interviews with African American adolescents, parents, and community leaders, coupled with comprehensive reviews of empirical racial socialization literature. Items were scrutinized by panels of cultural psychologists to ensure semantic clarity, developmental appropriateness, and freedom from regional colloquial obsolescence. Subsequent factor analytic investigations (Stevenson et al., 2002) corroborated that the five extracted dimensions adequately capture the full conceptual spectrum of adolescent racial socialization experiences without substantial construct underrepresentation.
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Convergent and Concurrent Validity
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Extensive empirical studies corroborate that TERS subscales correlate systematically with related psychological and developmental constructs:
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- Racial and Ethnic Identity: High scores on CPR, CAL, and CCA exhibit strong positive correlations with the Affirmation, Achievement, and Resolution subscales of Phinney’s Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM) and the Cross Racial Identity Scale (CRIS). Adolescents reporting frequent pride and legacy socialization demonstrate advanced racial identity exploration and higher self-concept clarity.
- Kinship Support and Familial Cohesion: Stevenson, Reed, and Bodison (1996) demonstrated that adolescents who perceived robust kinship social support reported significantly higher levels of Cultural Coping with Antagonism and Cultural Appreciation of Legacy, establishing that extended family structures serve as primary conduits for proactive socialization.
- Self-Esteem and Coping Efficacy: High PRSE scores correlate positively with global self-worth on Harter’s Self-Perception Profile for Adolescents and elevated scores on active coping inventories.
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Discriminant Validity
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Discriminant validity is evidenced by the distinct, divergent associations observed between the proactive subscales (CCA, CPR, CAL, CAD) and the assimilationist subscale (CEM). While CPR and CAL are inversely or non-significantly related to depressive symptoms, CEM has demonstrated null or occasionally counter-intuitive positive correlations with distress under conditions of high perceived discrimination, indicating that uncritical endorsement of mainstream fairness fails to buffer adolescents when systemic barriers are encountered.
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Predictive and Longitudinal Validity
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Longitudinal data derived from adolescent development studies, including evaluations within the Fast Track Project technical reports (Nicholson, 2002), demonstrate that baseline TERS scores predict subsequent psychological adjustment, academic self-efficacy, and behavioral outcomes. Specifically, adolescents reporting high CPR combined with moderate-to-high CAD exhibited fewer disruptive behavior referrals, higher grade point averages, and lower levels of externalizing problems over multi-year follow-up intervals, supporting the protective “shielding” hypothesis articulated in RECAST theory.
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Reliability
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The TERS demonstrates robust reliability across diverse adolescent cohorts, confirming its utility for both experimental research and group-level clinical evaluations.
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Internal Consistency (Cronbach’s Alpha)
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The internal consistency of the TERS subscales has been extensively documented in original validation cohorts (Stevenson et al., 2002) and subsequent independent empirical investigations:
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- Cultural Coping with Antagonism (CCA): α = .85 to .89 (13 items). This subscale exhibits high internal homogeneity, reflecting cohesive participant responses across kinship and spiritual dimensions.
- Cultural Pride Reinforcement (CPR): α = .81 to .83 (9 items). Excellent internal consistency across items reflecting personal pride, racial dignity, and educational motivation.
- Cultural Appreciation of Legacy (CAL): α = .73 to .77 (5 items). Satisfactory to good reliability given the brief length of the scale.
- Cultural Alertness to Discrimination (CAD): α = .76 to .81 (6 items). Strong internal reliability measuring youth awareness of racial barriers and systemic bias.
- Cultural Endorsement of the Mainstream (CEM): α = .64 to .71 (6 items). Acceptable reliability for an exploratory attitudinal subscale reflecting diverse mainstream beliefs.
- Proactive Racial Socialization Experience (PRSE): α = .92 to .94 (33 items). Exceptional composite reliability for research designs examining aggregate proactive messaging.
- Adaptive Racial Socialization Experience (ARSE): α = .93 to .94 (40 items). High overall composite reliability across the complete instrument.
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Test-Retest Stability
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In sub-sample stability analyses across 6- to 8-week intervals, stability coefficients for the five primary factors ranged from r = .68 to r = .78, demonstrating that while racial socialization experiences fluctuate based on evolving social interactions and developmental shifts, adolescent perceptions remain temporally stable over moderate evaluation windows.
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Factor Analysis
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The structural dimensionality of the TERS was established through rigorous exploratory and confirmatory factor analytic protocols.
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Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)
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During scale development (Stevenson et al., 2002), initial pools of race-related items were administered to urban Black adolescent cohorts. Principal Axis Factoring (PAF) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) with oblique (Promax) and orthogonal (Varimax) rotations were performed. The rationale for oblique rotation was the theoretical expectation that dimensions of cultural coping, pride, and legacy would be moderately interrelated.
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Examination of eigenvalues (criteria > 1.0) and scree plot inflection points supported a robust five-factor solution accounting for substantial total variance:
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- Factor 1: Cultural Coping with Antagonism (CCA) accounted for the largest percentage of variance, with standardized factor loadings ranging from .42 to .71 across its 13 designated items.
- Factor 2: Cultural Pride Reinforcement (CPR) emerged with strong loadings (.40 to .69) across 9 items centered on personal dignity and bicultural competence.
- Factor 3: Cultural Appreciation of Legacy (CAL) loaded cleanly (.44 to .67) across 5 items explicitly addressing slavery, African royalty, and cultural heritage.
- Factor 4: Cultural Alertness to Discrimination (CAD) displayed salient loadings (.41 to .68) across 6 items measuring awareness of institutional prejudice.
- Factor 5: Cultural Endorsement of the Mainstream (CEM) captured the remaining 6 items with loadings between .38 and .62.
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Item 10 (“All races are equal”) was retained within the structural inventory as an indicator of general egalitarian belief, although in original structural configurations, it primarily functioned as a baseline normative anchor rather than anchoring a specific single subscale.
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Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)
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Subsequent Confirmatory Factor Analyses conducted in independent samples (e.g., Fast Track technical reports; Stevenson et al., 2002) corroborated the five-factor oblique structure over alternative unifactorial or two-factor models. Model fit indices confirmed acceptable to good psychometric fit:
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- Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): .046 to .054 (90% CI [.041, .058]), falling well within established criteria for close fit (≤ .06).
- Comparative Fit Index (CFI): .91 to .94, confirming strong structural adequacy against independence models.
- Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): .90 to .93.
- Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): .051 to .058, indicating low residual covariation.
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Second-order hierarchical CFA models further validated the higher-order constructs, demonstrating that CCA, CPR, CAL, and CAD load onto the overarching latent factor of Proactive Racial Socialization Experience (PRSE), which in turn, alongside CEM, fits into the total Adaptive Racial Socialization Experience (ARSE) framework.
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Instrument / Measurement Tool
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The Teenager Experience of Racial Socialization (TERS) is structured as follows:
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- Instrument Designation: Teenager Experience of Racial Socialization (TERS).
- Target Population: African American and Black adolescents, typically aged 11 to 19 years (grades 6 through 12).
- Administration Format: Self-report questionnaire, available in paper-and-pencil or computerized/digital formats. Can be administered individually or in group classroom settings.
- Completion Time: Approximately 15 to 25 minutes.
- Item Count: 40 items.
- Response Scale: 3-point frequency Likert scale:
- 1 = Never
- 2 = A few times
- 3 = Lot of times
- Subscale Item Composition:\n
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- Cultural Coping with Antagonism (CCA) [13 items]: Items 3, 5, 6, 8, 18, 19, 20, 21, 25, 26, 27, 31, 37
- Cultural Pride Reinforcement (CPR) [9 items]: Items 9, 11, 12, 23, 24, 30, 32, 33, 40
- Cultural Appreciation of Legacy (CAL) [5 items]: Items 4, 7, 14, 15, 16
- Cultural Alertness to Discrimination (CAD) [6 items]: Items 28, 29, 34, 35, 36, 38
- Cultural Endorsement of the Mainstream (CEM) [6 items]: Items 1, 2, 13, 17, 22, 39
- Unassigned / Egalitarian Anchor: Item 10
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- Scoring Protocols:\n
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- Subscale Raw Scores: Calculated by summing the numerical ratings (1, 2, or 3) for the respective items within each subscale. Alternatively, mean subscale scores can be derived by dividing the sum by the number of completed items (score range: 1.00 to 3.00).
- Proactive Racial Socialization Experience (PRSE): Sum of items across CCA, CPR, CAL, and CAD (33 items; raw score range: 33 to 99).
- Adaptive Racial Socialization Experience (ARSE): Sum across all 40 items of the scale (raw score range: 40 to 120).
- Missing Data Rules: Mean imputation is acceptable if an adolescent omits no more than 10% of items on a given subscale.
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Permissions & Fee and Test Year
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The Teenager Experience of Racial Socialization scale was formally introduced in peer-reviewed literature through developmental validation studies published in 2002 (with preliminary conceptual frameworks and kindred indices published by Stevenson and colleagues in 1994 and 1996). Comprehensive technical documentation and instrument distributions were facilitated through the Fast Track Project (Nicholson, 2002).
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The instrument is considered an open-access psychological measurement tool available without licensing fees for non-commercial academic, clinical, and scientific research purposes. Researchers and educational practitioners wishing to utilize, adapt, or digitize the TERS are encouraged to cite the foundational validation publication (Stevenson et al., 2002) and correspond with Dr. Howard C. Stevenson at the Racial Empowerment Collaborative, Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania.
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References
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Boykin, A. W., & Toms, F. D. (1985). Black child socialization: A conceptual framework. In H. P. McAdoo & J. L. McAdoo (Eds.), Black children: Social, educational, and parental environments (pp. 33–51). SAGE Publications.
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Nicholson, M. J. (2002). Teenager Experience of Racial Socialization (Technical Report). Fast Track Project. https://fasttrackproject.org/techrept/t/ter/ter9tech.pdf
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Spencer, M. B. (1995). Old issues and new theorizing about African American youth: A phenomenological variant of ecological systems theory. In R. L. Taylor (Ed.), African American youth: Their social and economic status in the United States (pp. 37–70). Praeger Publishers.
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Stevenson, H. C. (1994). Racial socialization in African American families: The art of balancing intolerance and survival. The Family Journal: Counseling and Therapy for Couples and Families, 2(3), 190–198. https://doi.org/10.1177/1066480794023002
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Stevenson, H. C. (1994). Validation of the Scale of Racial Socialization for African American Adolescents: Steps toward multidimensionality. Journal of Black Psychology, 20(4), 445–468. https://doi.org/10.1177/00957984940204005
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Stevenson, H. C., Cameron, R., Herrero-Taylor, T., & Davis, G. Y. (2002). Development of the Teenager Experience of Racial Socialization Scale: Correlates of race-related socialization frequency from the perspective of Black youth. Journal of Black Psychology, 28(2), 84–106. https://doi.org/10.1177/0095798402028002002
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Stevenson, H. C., Reed, J., & Bodison, P. (1996). Kinship social support and adolescent racial socialization beliefs: Extending the self to family. Journal of Black Psychology, 22(4), 498–508. https://doi.org/10.1177/0095798496022004007
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