M. Belinda Tucker, Ph.D.

Director, Family Research Consortium IV Associate Dean, UCLA Graduate Division Professor, Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences University of California, Los Angeles mbtucker@ucla.edu

For 25 years, Dr. Tucker has examined the link between psychological well-being and close-personal relationships. She has participated in the direction of a number of major national studies, including the National Survey of Black Americans in 1979 (as co-PI), and the Jamaica AIDS Project (as co-PI), a national survey of the Jamaican population completed in 1994. She has also directed (as PI), with anthropologist Claudia Mitchell-Kernan, a survey and re-interview of over 3400 residents in 21 cities across the U.S., known as the Survey of Families and Relationships (SFR). The initial survey, conducted in 1995-96 and funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, examined the social context and social and psychological correlates of family formation behaviors and attitudes. The re-interview completed in 2005 focuses on change. Among topics currently being explored are: spousal income dynamics and marital well-being as a function of race, the role of religion in adjustment to the events of 9/11, correlates of changing attitudes toward marriage, and factors influencing aggression levels in relationships.

Tucker is also a key investigator with Dr. Keith Kernan on an ethnographic study of familial contributions to resilience among three culturally distinct groups of African-descended adolescents, a component of a NICHD-funded project directed by anthropologist Thomas Weisner. The initial goal of the project was to identify, through ethnographic study, the social, cultural, and interactional features of family life that may facilitate or impair academic resilience in the face of the acknowledged risks to urban Black adolescents, both across and within three African descended, but culturally distinct, ethnic groups: African Americans, Belizean Creoles, and Belizean Garifuna. The project was extended to assess how these factors might affect the transition to adulthood. With anthropologist Eileen Anderson-Fye, of Case-Western University, they are also examining associations between mental health and academic achievement in sociocultural context.

With anthropologist Robert Edgerton, Tucker is co-directing another NICHD funded study that is a twenty-five year follow-up of mildly mentally retarded adults who were initially studied in young adulthood. The project is a rare examination of developmentally disabled persons in mid-life. Tucker is directing a new project with Mary Weaver of Friends Outside in Los Angeles County (an advocacy group for families of prisoners) and Dr. Carrie Petrucci of California State University, Los Angeles that examines the impact of incarceration on local families. The UCLA Office of Community Partnerships funds the two-year study.

Tucker has served on a number of national advisory panels and was recently appointed Associate Dean of the Graduate Division at UCLA.

UCLA Center for Culture & Health, 760 Westwood Plaza, Box 62, Los Angeles, CA 90024   FRC4@ucla.edu