This experimental study describes the effect of a preventive, psychoeducational, counselor intervention on the ethnic identity development of urban Haitian adolescents. Significant differences were found for gender but not between the control and experimental groups. Boys scored significantly lower (p c .05) than girls on the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure. Recommendations are made regarding school as a frontier for the enhancement of healthy minority adolescent development.
Developmentalists have long recognized that adolescence is a period of readiness (Erikson. 1963; Havighurst, 1951; for adolescents to progressively strengthen their patterns of identity formation. Ponterotto and Pedersen (1993) contended that ethnic identity development is as fundamental to the establishment of a healthy self-concept and positive intercultural attitudes as are more researched areas such as occupational identity and political identity as well as the search and commitment toward religious ideology (p. 41). Helms (1990) gave the following definition of the process of ethnic identity development:
A sense of group or collective identity based on one's perception that he or she shares a common ethnic heritage with a particular ethnic group . . . ethnic identity development theory concerns the psychological implications of ethnic group membership, that is belief systems that evolve in reaction to perceived differential racial-group membership. (p. 3)
THE CASE FOR ETHNIC IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT AND THE IGNORED POPULATION
Ethnic identity has been largely ignored by adolescent researchers (Phinney & Alipuria, 1990). When 24 of the nation's largest school systems are "majority minority" (Ponterotto & Casas. 1991, p. 28).
Judith Bachay is an assistant professor in psychology and a coordinator in the Department of GurCtance and Counseling at S a w 'fhomas University, M h i , Florida. Correspondence regarding this article should be sent to Judith Bachay, Saint Thomas University, 16400 Nw 32nd Avenue, Miami, FL 33054 [e-mail: JBachay@stuedul.