Sanford School graduate's dissertation on places and family processes to represent ASU in national competition
Winners of the highly competitive CGS/ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award to be announced in December
Chang (Jenny) Zhao smiles next to faculty member Rebecca White, who wrote the nomination letter for Zhao's dissertation.
Chang (Jenny) Zhao, a graduated family and human development doctoral student in the T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics, was selected as Arizona State University’s sole nominee for the 2024 CGS/ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award in social sciences.
The CGS/ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award, established in 1981, is a highly competitive recognition for recently graduated PhD students. The awards are reserved for two standout dissertations that contribute uncommonly exceptional and original insights. Each year, a university can select only one dissertation per category, with this year’s two categories being Mathematics, Physical Sciences and Engineering, and Social Sciences.
Zhao is representing ASU social sciences with a two-part dissertation titled "Latinx Family Processes in Place: An Examination of Ethnic-Racial Compositions of Ecological Systems.” It was selected after a thorough review by ASU faculty, who lauded its potential to influence future research on family development.
Her work sheds light on how the ecological environments where Latinx"Latinx" is a gender-neutral term used to refer to people of Latin American descent, applied here to match the terminology used in the study. families live and visit can significantly shape their experiences, particularly in terms of ethnic-racial socialization and identity, and language brokering. Her dissertation fills a gap in existing research by focusing on Latinx families in newer immigrant communities, such as Atlanta, Georgia, which have traditionally had fewer immigrants and have been less studied compared to more established communities.
New ways to explore how ecological contexts influence family processes
The dissertation is divided into two main studies. The first study looks at how Latinx adolescents help their families by translating and interpreting English for Spanish-speaking relatives—a process known as language brokering. Zhao’s research shows how this role develops over time and across different settings like school, appointments and daily life. Her findings suggest that adolescents living in neighborhoods with higher Latinx populations are more likely to take on these responsibilities, likely due to limited general and translation-related resources.
Zhao suggests an increase in dual-language support for Spanish speakers, particularly in newer immigrant communities, to shift the responsibility for everyday translation away from youth.
The second study focuses on Latina mothers and how the places they spend time in—such as residential neighborhoods, stores, work and schools—shape their ethnic-racial socialization, or the way they teach their children about race and ethnicity. Zhao identifies different groups of Latina mothers who accessed locations with diverse ethnic-racial compositions. Her analysis gives a detailed look at how varied daily environments, with distinct exposures to ethnicity and race, influence family practices and, in turn, impact children’s understanding of their own racial and ethnic identity.
Zhao’s focus on how Latina mothers’ environments influence ethnic-racial socialization provides insights into how cultural identity is passed down and maintained within families. This is particularly important in newer immigrant communities, where there may be fewer resources and less community support.
“Dr. Zhao’s dissertation is highly significant, both theoretically and substantively,” says Rebecca White, professor of family and human development in the Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics.
“(It) is the only research that I know of in the psychological sciences that assesses broader family ecologies (as opposed to one or two settings), uses state of the art psychological measures supported by sophisticated tests of longitudinal and gender invariance, and is longitudinal and prospective (i.e., controls for earlier levels of both the mediators and dependent variables).”
The two winners of the award will be announced at the CGS Annual Meeting Awards Luncheon in December 2024, where Zhao’s work will be highlighted alongside the nation’s top dissertations.