School racial climate and racial disparities in youth sedentary behavior: Do experiences of unfair treatment and prejudice explain the disparity?

Adolescent sedentary behavior is a public health problem affecting a large portion of youth in the United States; 25% and 33% of high school students use computers and watch television for more than 3 hours daily, respectively. Among adolescents, black youth tend to engage in more sedentary behavior than white youth, and thus disproportionately experience associated health problems. Inactive adolescents are more likely to suffer from obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and mental and emotional problems in adolescence, and from cancer, heart disease and stroke as adults. Additionally, even among those who are physically active, sedentary lifestyles are associated with poor health outcomes. Understanding how the school as a primary socialization context shapes sedentary behavior is understudied. Using a stress-coping behavior framework this study aims to (1) explain whether more negative racial climates in school lead to increased experiences of prejudice and unfair treatment, and in turn, increased sedentary behavior as a coping strategy, and (2) determine if these relationships differ by race-gender subgroups, thereby explaining why racial disparities in sedentary behavior exist. Longitudinal data from black and white adolescents from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health will be examined. Social network variables will be used to develop a novel and comprehensive measure of school racial climate that considers the racial structure of friendships. Multiple group structural equation modeling will be used to analyze the central hypothesized relationships for race-gender subgroups.