
Selcuk R SirinNew York University | NYU · Department of Applied Psychology
Selcuk R Sirin
Ph. D.
About
74
Publications
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Introduction
As an applied psychologist, I use empirical research methods to better understand the needs of children and families, and to arm professionals and policy makers with this knowledge so as to better address the needs of the most vulnerable. The goal that unites all of my work is to enhance the lives of marginalized children using development in context as a general framework.
Additional affiliations
September 2005 - present
September 2003 - September 2005
Publications
Publications (74)
This review provides a comprehensive evaluation of adolescent identity development research, critically examining the significant gap between the global distribution of adolescents and the focus of scholarly work. While over 85% of the world's youth live in the majority world—Africa, Asia, and Latin America—only 15% of developmental psychology stud...
This study was designed to determine the psychometric properties of the School Readiness Assessment Tool (SRAT), a new measurement tool for assessing school readiness. The measure aims to assess preschool children’s school readiness by estimating their academic, motor, social, emotional, and self-regulation skills. Both academic and motor skills ar...
Objective:
This meta-analysis aimed to systematically test the relation between acculturation and suicide-related outcomes among immigrants, with attention to key methodological (i.e., measure of suicide-related outcome, measure of acculturation) and demographic (i.e., race, gender, age, geographic region, publication year) moderators.
Method:
W...
Research on adolescence and substance use point to a link between internalizing problems and substance use. The current longitudinal study investigates how internalizing problems and substance use change over time among minority adolescents and the role of internalizing problems in predicting trajectories of substance use among African American and...
Purpose
We empirically examined the relation between acculturation and alcohol use in immigrant youth, with attention to demographic and methodological moderators.
Methods
We identified 43 studies (38 empirical studies published in peer-reviewed journals and 6 dissertations) yielding 66 independent samples and 118 effect sizes. The total sample si...
Purpose of Review
There is a growing body of work that documents the impact of 9/11 and the war on terror on Arab and Muslim children and families. This review is designed to provide a brief overview and suggest new ways to better understand this understudied population.
Recent Findings
Several studies show anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiments at...
The global and local contexts in which the individuals acculturate are important factors to consider because families’ acculturation experiences unfold within the local community of resettlement. Immigration can be a stressful transition for families as they negotiate multiple social and cultural forces between their home and host cultures. This ch...
“In this article, the authors provide an overview of the current global and US debates on immigration as a key developmental context for immigrant-origin youth. Relying on a conceptual framework that highlights both risk and protective factors, the authors provide evidence from their longitudinal study that empirically links acculturative stress to...
The study was conducted to understand the development of children’s understanding of war and peace and how they differ conditions of being exposed to war. Analysis of drawings of war and peace by children was utilized to access children’s conceptions. Syrian (n = 357) children who had been exposed to war and Turkish children (n = 285) who had not w...
Today, Syrians represent the largest refugee group in the world. Since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2012, more than 5.2 million Syrians have fled the country as refugees, and about half of these are children. Most of the Syrian refugees are currently living in neighboring countries, with Turkey hosting the largest group with numbers abo...
The overall aim of the study was to document the nature and depth of the traumatic experiences of Syrian children living in a refugee camp in Turkey during the early stages of the civil war and examine their impact on depressive symptoms. Self-report questionnaire data were collected from 285 participants, who were 57.9% females and on average 12.5...
Turkey is the top refugee-hosting country in the world, with more than three million registered Syrian refugees. An international research team was the first to document the educational and mental health needs of Syrian refugee children, finding that an overwhelming majority are not enrolled in school in Turkey, partly as a result of language barri...
Most research with Muslim populations has been conducted with samples of immigrants living in the West as minority populations. This study investigates how the culture-related variables of family values and self-construal relate to religiosity and attitudes toward psychological services among Muslims living in Turkey, a country where over 99% of th...
The aim of the present longitudinal study is to understand the longitudinal relation between depressive symptoms and daily hassles (i.e., general and acculturation hassles) in a high-risk population of unaccompanied refugees. We investigated the validity of three stress-mental health models: the stress exposure model, the stress generation model, a...
Shweder's Big Three Theory of Intuitive moral approach has not yet been investigated in Muslim culture. We aim at replicating Haidt and his colleagues' (1993) work using harmless taboo violation stories with a Muslim population of 167 young adults in Turkey. Participants' justifications and victim references were examined in terms of the three ethi...
The present study was designed to understand differences between unaccompanied refugees who retained or achieved good mental health (healthy or resilient) and those who maintained or developed poor mental health (clinical and vulnerable). Using person-based analyses, the role of pre-migration traumatic exposure and acculturation-related factors in...
PurposeThis three-wave longitudinal study explored the relation between discrimination-related stress and behavioral engagement among urban African-American and Latino adolescents, and the moderating effect of school-based social support.
Design/methodology/approachA sample of 270 African-American and Hispanic/Latino adolescents attending urban pub...
School achievement is greatly moderated by sociodemographic factors, such as socioeconomic status, minority status, students' gender and grade level as well as the location of schools. Based on a comprehensive review of the literature, the effect of socioeconomic status on school achievement is illustrated with empirical evidence.
This study is designed to provide an empirical conceptualization of daily hassles among unaccompanied refugees, and whether they might affect mental health of young refugees after resettlement. First, we examined the underlying structure of daily hassles conceptualized as measuring general and acculturation-specific hassles. Second, we examined whe...
Using a diverse urban sample of immigrant adolescents in the United States (N = 345) followed from 10th grade (Mage = 15.69) to 12th grade, this study examined the extent to which ecological assets (i.e., community connections and social network resources) predicted civic commitments (i.e., community engagement, social responsibility) as potentiall...
This three-wave longitudinal study of 173 Latino adolescents (M = 16.16 years, SD = 0.65) is designed to understand the role of discrimination-related stress in mental health trajectories during middle to late adolescence with attention to differences due to immigration status. The results of the growth curve analysis showed that anxious-depressed,...
The United Nations estimates that as of late 2014 over 3.5 million people had fled the civil war raging in Syria—of whom, 1.25 million were children. This paper examines the educational and mental health needs of Syrian children currently living as refugees. It starts with a brief outline of the historical roots of the conflict and how the progress...
Immigration is a life changing cultural transition that involves dealing with a variety of challenges having mental health implications. Multiple preimmigration circumstances and postimmigration conditions affect how migration is experienced, as do unique individual, family, and cultural factors. Without considering these factors, those who work wi...
We conducted a 3-wave, longitudinal study to examine the role of ethnic collective self-esteem and United States (U.S.) collective self-esteem on anxious-depressed symptoms over time among Asian and Latino immigrant-origin adolescents (n = 171). Growth curve analysis revealed that anxious-depressed symptoms first decreased between 10th and 11th gra...
This longitudinal study of 286, urban residing, first- and second-generation immigrant adolescents examined the degree to which acculturative stress is related to the developmental trajectories of mental health problems and the role of social support in this process. Participants were recruited when they entered 10th grade and two additional waves...
The present study examines the generational differences in the relation between acculturative stress and internalizing symptoms (i.e., anxiety and depression) with a sample of 304 urban residing first- and second-generation immigrant adolescents. In addition, the role of perceptions of social support—a critical element to healthy immigrant adolesce...
Immigrant-origin adolescents represent the fastest growing segment of youth population in the United States, and in many urban schools they represent the majority of students. In this 3-wave longitudinal study, we explored trajectories of internalizing mental health symptoms (depression, anxiety, and somatic symptoms). The participants included 332...
The attacks on September 11, 2001, changed the lives of all Americans. For many immigrant Muslims in the United States this meant dealing with an elevated amount of discrimination. This study investigated how perceived discrimination influenced levels of community engagement among Muslim American emerging adults and whether it varied by gender. Dat...
This chapter presents findings from two complementary studies that focus on positive youth development among Muslim American youth. Study 1, using survey methods, revealed that identifying with one's own religious group, along with religiosity, serves as a critical factor in the formation of positive values and positive identities for Muslim Americ...
Taking seriously the call for methodological and analytic pluralism, we advance three key assumptions of theory and method: 1) young people develop “hyphenated selves” in shifting social and political contexts and in everyday circumstances; 2) pluralistic methods and research designs have the potential to capture identity movement across time and s...
This study examined how various components of school engagement contribute to the academic performance of African American adolescents. The sample consisted of 499 African American adolescents in Grades 9 to 11. We investigated how adolescents' gender, grade, cognitive functioning, and parental education affect their school engagement and whether s...
This article presents the psychometric qualifications of a new video-based measure of school professionals' ethical sensitivity toward issues of racial intolerance in schools. The new scale, titled the Quick-Racial and Ethical Sensitivity Test (Quick-REST) is based on the ethical principles commonly shared by school-based professional organisations...
Identity negotiation is a process in which individuals construct their identity in context across various domains (Swann, 1987). This process is influenced not only by per-sonal characteristics (e.g., religious or ethnic background) but social and political contexts (e.g., civil war or the events of 9/11 and its aftermath). For immigrant minority y...
This study examines the implications of how teachers’ views of immigrant parents predict their ratings of first-grade students’ academic competence and behavioral problems. Teachers rated 191 first-grade immigrant students attending Islamic and public schools in the Northeast United States. The results showed that when teachers perceived parents as...
Demographic data show a trend toward increasing racial and ethnic diversity among students in public schools, but the teaching population is projected to remain largely White and female. Without proper training, teachers will be ill equipped to meet the educational needs of these diverse students and run the risk of unwittingly perpetuating prevale...
The well-being and productivity of immigrant youth has become one of the most important global issues of our times as a result of mass migration and resettlement. In this unique volume, leading scholars from multiple nations and disciplines provide a state-of-the-art overview of contemporary research on immigrant youth and delineate the most promis...
This mixed methods study explored dual identification among Muslim-American emerging adults of immigrant origin. A closer look was taken at the relationship between American and Muslim identifications and how this relationship was influenced by experiences of discrimination, acculturative and religious practices, and whether it varied by gender. Da...
Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent "war on terror," growing up Muslim in the U.S. has become a far more challenging task for young people. They must contend with popular cultural representations of Muslim-men-as-terrorists and Muslim-women-as-oppressed, the suspicious gaze of peers, teachers, and strangers, and po...
In this article, we present social–psychological notions about critical consciousness, change, and power that we consider foundational to the study of youth under siege. Relying on Lewin's field theory and Du Bois’ dual consciousness, and critical psychology literature on sociopolitical understandings of conflict, we propose a new conceptual and th...
In the wake of the events of September 11, Muslim-American youth found that the multiple cultures within which they live were suddenly and alarmingly in conflict. The developmental consequences of living in a world fractured by religious and ethnic terror have yet to be determined for Muslim youth in the United States. This exploratory, mixed-metho...
At any given point in ontogenetic and historical time, neither individuals' attributes nor the features of their context alone are the leading predictors of their healthy development and adaptation. Instead, the relations between the individual and different levels of his/her ecology (such as family, peers, settings, cultural values, and media) are...
The characteristics of parental attachment were assessed for a sample of 81 emerging adults (ages 22-28 years) and their mothers. Emerging adults' reports of self-worth were found to mediate the relationship between their reports of parental attachment and depressive symptoms. The emerging adults' unique perspectives of the attachment relationship...
Over the last decade researchers have reported consistently that children differ in their pre-academic skills at the beginning of kindergarten and that those differences are often related to their family's socioeconomic status (SES) and, to a lesser extent, their ethnicity (Lee & Burkam, 2002; Stipek & Ryan, 1997). Our education system should provi...
This meta-analysis reviewed the literature on socioeconomic status (SES) and academic achievement in journal articles published between 1990 and 2000. The sample included 101,157 students, 6,871 schools, and 128 school districts gathered from 74 independent samples. The results showed a medium to strong SES–achievement relation. This relation, howe...
Clinicians, scientists, and policy makers are increasingly taking interest in the long-term outcomes of early intervention programs undertaken during the 1960s and 1970s, which were intended to improve young children's health and educational prospects. The Brookline Early Education Project (BEEP) was an innovative, community-based program that prov...
This study examined the influence of gender role transgressions on perceptions of men and women's social status, homosexual orientation, and value dissimilarity. Because past research has shown that men who transgress gender role norms are punished more harshly than women, it was hypothesized that male transgressors would be perceived more negative...
Recognizing the importance future aspirations play in the developmental outcomes of adolescents, this study illuminates the role that individual and contextual factors play in the formation of future aspirations among urban youth. The data for this study were collected prior to the implementation of an intervention program at an urban high school....
Because of the scarcity of knowledge about middle-class African American adoles- cents, the present study explored psychological and parental factors in relation to ac- ademic performance. The participants were 336 middle-class African American stu- dents and their biological mothers. The findings suggest that for African American middle-class adol...
The authors examined predictors of teachers' ratings of academic competence of 105 kindergarten children from low-income families. Teachers rated target children's expected competence in literacy and math and completed questions about their perceptions of congruence-dissonance between themselves and the child's parents regarding education-related v...
This article describes the development of a computerized version of a measure of ethical sensitivity to racial and gender intolerance, the Racial Ethical Sensitivity Test (REST; Brabeck et al., 2000). The REST was based on James Rest's (1983) 4-component model of moral development and the professional codes of ethics from school-based professions....
This study examined the impact of the Nursing Home Reform Act of 1987 on resident-and-facility-level risk factors for physical restraint use in nursing homes. Data on the 1990 and 1993 cohorts were obtained from 268 facilities in 10 states, and data on a 1996 cohort were obtained from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, which sampled more than 80...
This study examines the impact of social class on the school-to-work (STW) transitions of young adults in working-class occupations. Using an exploratory, qualitative research methodology, interviews were conducted with 10 men and 10 women to examine the role of social class in the STW transition. All participants were working in low-skilled jobs a...
This study examines the impact of social class on the school-to-work (STW) transitions of young adults in working-class occupations. Using an exploratory, qualitative research methodology, interviews were conducted with 10 men and 10 women to examine the role of social class in the STW transition. All participants were working in low-skilled jobs a...
In this article, the case vignettes and discussants' reactions from the series entitled "Getting Down to Cases" from the Career Development Quarterly were analyzed to identify themes pertaining to the overlap between work and interpersonal relationships. The most common theme, which was found in more than 50% of the cases, was the expression of int...
This article is an attempt to develop a measure of ethical sensitivity to racial and gender intolerance that occurs in schools. Acts of intolerance that indicate ethically insensitive behaviors in American schools were identified and tied to existing professional ethical codes developed by school-based professional organizations. The Racial Ethical...
Thesis (Ph. D.)--Boston College, 2003. Submitted to Lynch Graduate School of Education. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 113-135). Microfiche. s