s (1991)
Multicultural Model of the Stress Process was used as the basis for exploring ethnic and racial differences in the life stress process among 103 Black, 129 Hispanic, and 105 White high school students from a multiethnic, predominantly minority, large urban school district. Cross-group comparisons were made on life stress exposure, appraisal of negative event impact, social support, and psychological symptomatology. White adolescents reported more negatively impactful stressful life events and lower levels of received social support than did Black or Hispanic adolescents. Minority status predicted ethnic and racial differences independent of socioeconomic status.
L ife stress has been conceptualized by Lazarus and Folkman (1984) as a person-environment transaction. This model takes into account individual differences in perception of event threat, desirability, personal resources, ability to cope, and response options (Dohrenwend & Dohrenwend, 1974, 1984;Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Although there has been widespread use of this transactional model to explore individual differences in the life stress process in White populations, this has not been the case in ethnically and racially diverse populations. Thus, what we know about the life stress process may not be applicable to ethnic and racial minority individuals.
To examine the life stress process in ethnically and racially heterogeneous populations, Slavin, Rainer, McCreary, and Gowda (1991) proposed an expansion of Lazarus and Folkman's (1984) model, the Multicultural Model of the Stress Process. To better understand the stress process in ethnic/racial minority individuals, Slavin et al. recommended that culturally relevant measures be used at each stage of the model. In the following section we provide a brief description of Lazarus and Folkman's transactional model and list ways in which life stress research from this perspective has not addressed adult or, as is the focus here,