A Latent Profile Analysis of Latino Adolescents’ Cultural Wealth, Ethnic-Racial Discrimination, and Academic Adjustment

Drawing from the model of community cultural wealth, which suggests that youth from minoritized populations can draw on their cultural knowledge, networks, and skills to successfully navigate their academic contexts, the current study examined whether latent profiles of cultural capital emerged among a sample of Latino adolescents using various indicators of cultural wealth. The sample included 627 Latino adolescents (95% U.S.-born; 57% girls; 33% 9th graders, 27% 10th graders, 23% 11th graders, 18% 12th graders). Specifically, configurations of cultural wealth were analyzed based on the following dimensions: familial ethnic socialization, ethnic-racial identity components, and emotional support from Latino and non-Latino friendship networks. Research questions also included testing whether profiles characterized by greater cultural wealth exhibited better academic adjustment (i.e., emotional and behavioral academic adjustment, academic self-efficacy, and school belonging), and whether the association between ethnoracial discrimination and academic adjustment was moderated by profile membership. Findings revealed four profiles, with the largest (38%) consisting of adolescents with high cultural wealth (i.e., Achieved, High FES, High Friend Support). Furthermore, this profile exhibited better academic adjustment relative to the profiles that varied in levels of cultural wealth. When examining whether profiles with more cultural wealth also demonstrated better academic adjustment in the face of ethnoracial discrimination, findings revealed that a subgroup with more moderate cultural wealth (Moratorium, Moderate FES, High Friend Support) was more vulnerable to discrimination for most indicators of adjustment compared to all other profiles. Overall, findings extend previous variable-centered work by showing that Latino adolescents have heterogeneous experiences with cultural wealth, and examining these subgroups of adolescents provides novel insights into understanding how cultural wealth differently relates to adolescents’ academic adjustment, including in the context of ethnoracial discrimination.