User:PsychologyStudent123/Harriette Pipes McAdoo

Early Life
Dr. McAdoo was a member of the sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha, Inc. She traveled often to conduct multicultural studies, completing research in Zimbabwe, Ghana, Kenya, and sang in multiple groups, including the MSU Choral Union, the Earl Nelson Singers, and All Souls Church Choir. She was a member Ann Arbor Friends Meeting, Red Cedar Friends Meeting, and All Souls Church, Unitarian.

Career
After 21 years on the faculty at Howard University in the School of Social Work, two of which she spent as acting dean, she was named a Distinguished Professor at Michigan State in the Department of Sociology and the School of Human Ecology. McAdoo, alongside other African American faculty, was instrumental in the launching of a PhD program for African American and African Studies at Michigan State-- serving as a member of the executive board. McAdoo was also the first African American to be elected to the Board of Directors of the Groves Conference on Marriage and the Family. She also held visiting professorships at several institutions, including Smith College and the University of Washington.

McAdoo and her husband, researcher John Lewis McAdoo, started working on the Family Life Project in the 1970s. The project was an attempt to study African-American families. Her concepts in research focused on leaving behind the "deficit orientation" --which had been a prominent approach to the study of most U.S. African American families and other ethnic families. The couple felt that most of the sociological evidence on African-American families reinforced long-held stereotypes because they came from dysfunctional families who had contact with agencies such as prisons and drug treatment programs rather than from middle-class families. McAdoo and her husband systematically looked at middle-class black families in Washington, D.C.

The Association of Black Psychologists named McAdoo its 1978 Outstanding Researcher of the Year. From 1989 and 1990, McAdoo served on the Social Science Advisory Board for the Poverty Race Research Action Council to inform civil rights policy. During the Carter administration, McAdoo was an appointee to the White House Conference on Families. In 1994, McAdoo was the president of the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR)--receiving the first Marie Peters Award in 1984 for Outstanding Scholarship, Leadership and Service in the Area of Ethnic Minority families as well as the Ernest Burgess Award in 2004. She was the editor of a four-volume anthology known as Black Families. She and her husband established the Empirical Conference on Black Psychology.

After 21 years on the faculty at Howard University in the School of Social Work, two of which she spent as acting dean, she was named a Distinguished Professor at Michigan State in the Department of Sociology and the School of Human Ecology. McAdoo was the first African American to be elected to the Board of Directors of the Groves Conference on Marriage and the Family. She also held visiting professorships at several institutions, including Smith College and the University of Washington. Dr, McAdoo was a member of many National Organizations including NCFR, ABPsi, Groves, APA, ASA, SRCD, and Empirical Black Psychology.

McAdoo and her husband, researcher John Lewis McAdoo, started working on the Family Life Project in the 1970s. The project was an attempt to study African-American families. Her concepts in research focused on leaving behind the "deficit orientation" that is a prominent approach to the study of most U.S. African American families and other ethnic families. The couple felt that most of the sociological evidence on this subject reinforced long-held stereotypes because they came from families who had contact with agencies such as prisons and drug treatment programs rather than from families with no such contacts. McAdoo and her husband systematically looked at middle-class black families in Washington, D.C.

The Association of Black Psychologists named McAdoo its 1978 Outstanding Researcher of the Year.From In 1989 and 1990, McAdoo served on the Social Science Advisory Board for the Poverty Race Research Action Council to inform civil rights policy. During the Carter administration, McAdoo was an appointee to the White House Conference on Families. In 1994, McAdoo was the president of the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR)--receiving both the Marie Peters Award for Outstanding Scholarship, Leadership and Service in the Area of Ethnic Minority families and the Ernest Burgess Award in 2004. She was the editor of a four-volume anthology known as Black Families. She and her husband established the Empirical Conference on Black Psychology.

Research [edit]
One facet of McAdoo's research was based on providing models to study child development in minority populations by placing the focus of her model at the intersection of race, culture, ethnicity, and social class. She did this in her study "An Integrative Model for Study of Developmental Competencies in Minority Children". She also provided an evaluation of the framework that has been used to study minority children and families. She used her examination to provide a conceptual model for child development, based in her studies of racism, oppression, and segregation on minority children and families. This research by McAdoo provides a resilience perspective rather than a deficit perspective to minority children when studying child development. The integrative model proposed by McAdoo and her colleagues utilizes adaptive culture to represent the ways marginalized families express personalized freedom in their experiences in society. The integrative model is still utilized in many studies of child development for minority children today.

In another area of McAdoo's research, she used data from report cards for Black and White students to study the difference in transition to schools and parental involvements effects on learning. She also discovered different social structures effects on the early schooling process and development. This research was used to study other effects on development for minority children in schools. In one continuation of this research, data was taken from the Early Child Longitudinal Study-- Kindergarten Cohort to study different factors that can correlate classroom competition and children's academic and socioemotional functioning in transitioning to elementary school. Researchers studied the factors of parental involvement and communication quality and the relationship between these two. This research showed that greater diversity promoted more parental involvement for students with same-race representation in classrooms. These factors, in turn, promoted children's reading and interpersonal skills.

McAdoo was also involved in research topics surrounding global public health. This research centered around micronutrient levels of pregnant women in Harare, Zimbabwe who were affected by HIV-1 and measles virus. This offered further development in the study of nutrition and clinical epidemiology. This research was used to offer further considerations as to the incomplete understanding of HIV distribution in Africa, the diversity of the HIV virus, and the need for continual research and surveillance.

Death and Legacy
In 2018, Ijeoma Opara was named the recipient of the John L. and Harriette P. McAdoo Dissertation Award for her work on highlighting protective factors for drug use and sexual risk behavior prevention among Black and Hispanic female adolescents. The recipient in 2020 was Azucena Versin, PhD for her research on minority families, with a focus on issues of motherhood.