Honors Fellow, Chelsea McQueen '15 and Buffie Longmire-Avital, an assistant professor of psycholgy presented their research at the Annual Conference for the Association for Women in Psychology (AWP) in San Francisco, CA March 5 - 8.
The poster was titled, “Race-Related Stress and its Relationship with Obesity Risk Behaviors for Emerging Adult Black Women.” The research presented was part of McQueen’s honors research and Longmire-Avital’s ongoing work examining how perceptions of race-related stress (i.e., microracial aggressions) are related to health behaviors (e.g., eating, exercise, and substance use). This specific study explored the relationship between race-related stress, obesity risk behaviors and the moderating role of a racial homogeneous environment for Black female undergraduates and recent graduates attending either predominately white institutions (PWIs) or historically Black institutions (HBCUs). Findings suggest a moderate relationship between race-related stress and emotional eating habits regardless of college environment. However, students attending HBCUs were more likely to engage in obesity risk reduction behaviors, such as jogging/running and graduates of HBCU were more likely to use yoga and/or meditation to cope with race-related stress than alumni from PWIs.