Sycarah Fisher

• PhD
• Associate Professor at University of Georgia

Although multiracial individuals are the fastest growing population in the United States, research on the identity development of multiracial adolescents remains scant. This study explores the relationship between ethnic identity, its components (affirmation, exploration), and mental health outcomes (anxiety, depressive symptoms) within the context...

Professional organizations and federal legislation stipulate that assessments of all students must be fair and unbiased. Although these entities provide guidance, there continues to be a gap between guidelines and practice. This article examines the nature of culturally competent practice with Ebonics-speaking youth. Many school psychologists face...

Children with significant behavior problems are at risk for poor school adaptation and a host of deleterious school outcomes. Given the time children spend in school, there is a need to better understand the normative contexts and processes within schools that may enhance the positive adaptation of children with significant behavior problems. This...

Adolescent substance use is a top national public health concern with approximately 50% of youth having tried an illicit substance by the end of high school. The transition to high school is a critical point for substance use initiation. Despite this fact, there is relatively limited research looking at factors that can protect students from substa...

Little is known about the mechanisms of the relationship between racial discrimination and substance use among Black youth. The current study examined the role of collective self-esteem and personal self-esteem in this relationship among Black adolescents in grades 5 through 12 (N = 1514; 57% female). Regression analyses estimated direct effects of...

Objective: Previous work indicates that African-American adolescents are at high risk for concurrent alcohol and cannabis use. The present study examines the associations of traditional ecological predictors of substance use with concurrent alcohol and cannabis use among African-American adolescents. It also examines whether racial identity, a cult...

The current study sought to examine the prospective relationship of peer victimization on changes in Asian American youth’s depressive symptoms during early adolescence, a crucial period for the development of depression and engagement in peer victimization among youth. Further, as guided by cultural–ecological frameworks, the current study also so...

Objective Substance use is a public health concern and cross-sectional studies have found that impulsivity and drinking motives influence substance use in emerging adults. Despite these findings, longitudinal studies with nuanced measures of impulsivity and drinking motives are needed. Participants: The current study investigated the three-year rel...

Positive self-esteem is linked to academic success for K–12 students. However, self-esteem declines during adolescence, especially for African Americans. Positive perceptions of school climate are well-studied predictors of self-esteem. Given the risk for greater declines in self-esteem experienced by African American students, this study sought to...

Introduction Ethnic identity is an important protective factor for various ethnic groups and developmental periods. Although existing measures assessing ethnic identity are well known, less is known about the measurement invariance of the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM) across adolescent ethnic groups. The present study evaluates the fact...

Background: Substance use in multiracial adolescents exceeds rates identified in the general population. Despite this fact, there is limited research examining risk and protective factors for multiracial substance use. Objectives: The current study examined the moderating effect of social support on the relationship between ethnic identity and subs...

Peer victimization is associated with alcohol use among adolescents. However, few studies have examined the mediating role of depression and anxiety, or differences by race. The current study examined the prospective relationship of peer victimization, depressive and anxiety symptoms, and alcohol use across two timeframes: 9th to 11th grade and 10t...

Objectives: Racial discrimination is associated with numerous negative health outcomes, including increased risk for depression and anxiety symptoms and substance use. Positive affect toward of one’s ethnic or racial group (i.e., ethnic–racial identity affirmation) has been shown to buffer the negative effects of racial discrimination on health out...

Background: Adolescent substance use is a national health concern. While the literature is clear on the prevalence of substance use during the adolescent developmental period, a dearth of literature is available on the developmental contexts, particularly the influence of school factors, in which substance use occurs. Objectives: This study exam...

Objective: Peer victimization in school is common, with emerging literature suggesting that it may also increase risk for substance abuse. Yet, little is known about the underlying mechanisms within this risk pathway. The objective of this study is to use a prospective 3-wave design to examine the mediating role of depressive symptomatology on the...

Background: African American marijuana use is associated with many negative social, emotional, and health-related consequences. Of significance, over recent years this population has shown an increase in use. In the literature, ethnic identity and school engagement are prominent protective factors against substance use. Objective: This study wil...

Multicultural supervision is defined as a supervisory relationship in which the supervisor and supervisee are of different cultural backgrounds and/or the discussion of multicultural issues in supervision. Attention to cultural issues in supervision is associated with positive supervisory relationships and trainees' development in culturally compet...

The purpose of the current content analysis was to build upon previous empirical research both within school psychology and in other subdisciplines of psychology to refine the operationalized definition of social justice within school psychology research. Operationalizing the definition and substantiating it within the empirical literature is a cri...

Ethnic identity is an important buffer against drug use among minority youth. However, limited work has examined pathways through which ethnic identity mitigates risk. School-aged youth (N = 34,708; 52 % female) of diverse backgrounds (i.e., African American (n = 5333), Asian (n = 392), Hispanic (n = 662), Multiracial (n = 2129), Native American (n...

Objective: The current study sought to examine the prospective relationship between anxiety and depressive symptoms among Asian American (AA) early adolescents, a crucial period for the development of depression among youth. Further, as guided by cultural-ecological frameworks, a second aim of this study was to identify protective factors (i.e., pa...

Fifty percent of adolescents have tried an illicit drug and 70% have tried alcohol by the end of high school, with even higher rates among multiracial youth. Ethnic identity is a protective factor against substance use for minority groups. However, little is known about the mechanisms that facilitate its protective effects, and even less is known a...

Background: African Americans represent 13% of the U.S. population but 46% of people living with HIV and nearly 40% of state and federal prisoners. Disproportionate rates of HIV among African American males involved in the criminal justice system have been associated with risk factors, including: contracting sexually transmitted infections (STIs),...

African American youth who experience racial discrimination are at heightened risk to use drugs as a coping response to distress. Based on the buffer-stress hypothesis, we proposed that parental support would attenuate this effect. Participants were 1,521 African American youth between 4th and 12th grade. As hypothesized, a mediation pathway was ob...

The substance use of African Americans is associated with many school-related consequences. Ethnic identity and school engagement have been shown to be protective against substance use. However, the question remains to what degree do these factors influence substance use. It is the aim of this study to investigate these factors to better understand...

The rates of illicit drug use among African American women are increasing, yet African American women are least likely to participate in treatment for substance use disorders when compared to women of other racial groups. The current study examined family history of substance use, perceived family support, and John Henryism Active Coping (JHAC) as...

This study reports on the initial development and examination of the School Psychology Multicultural Competence Scale (SPMCS), a 45-item self-report measure for evaluating school psychologists’ multicultural competence in the primary domains of school psychology practice (i.e., assessment, consultation, intervention). A sample of 312 school psychol...

Although students with externalizing behaviors inherently exhibit behaviors that contribute to poor teacher relationships, little research has examined the positive characteristics these students may possess that serve to facilitate positive teacher relationships. This study explores the moderating effects of adaptability, social skills, and study...

Children’s development is a product of parent–child interactions and the interplay between children’s environments and the individuals within them. Therefore, parenting dynamics and the context in which parenting occurs should be explored when examining children’s development. This study examines community violence exposure as a contextual variable...

Although bullying is a prevalent issue in the United States, limited research has explored the impact of school diversity on types of bullying behavior. This study explores the relationship between school diversity, student race, and bullying within the school context. The participants were African American and Caucasian middle school students (n =...

Video modeling involves the learner viewing videos of a model demonstrating a target skill. According to the National Professional Development Center on Autism Spectrum Disorders (2011), video modeling is an evidenced-based intervention for individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in elementary through middle school. Little research exists e...

Consultation is used to provide indirect services to students. The process typically occurs with a school psychologist consultant and a teacher consultee. Few cases exist demonstrating consultation with nontraditional or multiple consultees. The current study showed the use of consultation with multiple interdisciplinary consultees to implement two...

The current study examines whether a difference exists between learning style and attitudes toward mathematics relative to gender and race. The sample comprised 384 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in institutions of higher education within the United States who completed the Index of Learning Styles and Attitudes Toward Mathematics Inv...

Psychological well-being is the foundation for all children’s developmental competence and school success. Despite recommendations that socializing institutions, such as schools, devote more resources to children’s mental health (United States Department of Health and Human Services (USDHHS) 1999a), relatively little is known about the needs and re...