ABSTRACT
This chapter describes priorities for research on minority children and adolescents. Research on ethnic minority children is dominated by a race- and ethnic-comparative framework. A related criticism of the race or ethnic-comparative framework is that it not only fosters atheoretical research, but also impedes development of psychological theory relevant to minority groups and programmatic examination of individual differences within different minority groups. The view of minority children as deviant is further advanced by the practice of comparing low-socioeconomic status (SES) minority children with middle-SES white children. Cultural validity is concerned with the procedures necessary to identify the rules that regulate conduct as well as those that define various practices and institutions. Existing developmental research is undergirded by conceptual frameworks developed for thinking about white middle-class children and families. Minority children in general are more likely than their white counterparts to be confronted with a range of chronic and acute stressors associated with problematic development.
