Presenter(s): Maya Auld—Family and Human Services
Faculty Mentor(s): Ellen McWhirter
Session: Prerecorded Poster Presentation
Ethnic and Racial Identity (ERI) refers to a multidimensional psychological construct that represents the beliefs, values, and attitudes that an individual has about their ethnic-racial group and group membership and the process by which these beliefs develop over the lifespan (Umaña-Taylor et al ., 2014). ERI is a protective factor for Latinx adolescents that can enable resiliency when confronted with discrimination (Phinney, 2003; Romero & Roberts 2003) . ERI is positively related to academic self-efficacy, social competence, leadership, and social responsibility among Latinx high school students (Umaña-Taylor et al ., 2014) .
The current political and social environment threatens positive identity as anti-immigration and anti-Latinx sentiments are increasing (Muste, 2013; Rogers et al ., 2017) . This negative public regard for the Latinx community has fueled several thousand pieces of legislation in regard to immigration in the past decade at the state level, largely involving law enforcement of verification of immigration status (Stupi et al ., 2016) . Both US and foreign-born Latinx individuals suffer similar levels of psychological destress related to negative public regard of immigrants (Szkupinski et al ., 2014) .
The setting for the current study is a Pacific Northwest state in which 23% of k-12 students are Latinx (Gill et al ., 2019) . Data for the present study, collected in spring of 2019, is written responses to the question “What does it mean to you to be Latina/o/x?” Participants were 495 Latinx high school students attending a one-day leadership conference . First, responses were coded using inductive thematic analysis (Braun & Clark, 2006) . Themes present in open ended responses include culture, pride, community, family, language, and resistance . Second, we explored relationships between themes, academic achievement, and attendance in school . This part of the analysis is ongoing . We elaborate on findings and highlight the importance of positive regard of ethnic identity for Latinx high school students in the Pacific Northwest .