Karamojong Adolescents in Tororo, Uganda: Life Events, Adjustment Problems, and Protective Factors

ABSTRACT

The Karamojong people of Uganda are marginalized and likely to have difficult lives. Research is needed to understand Karamojong children’s challenges, adjustment, and resiliency to help guide interventions and policies to improve their lives. Thus, 18 Karamojong 10–16-year-olds (10 girls; M = 13.33 years; SD = 1.81) were recruited from a nongovernmental organization in Tororo District, Uganda, and interviewed about their life events, coping strategies, social support, and hope. Adolescents also were verbally administered questionnaires about their life events and adjustment problems. Participants reported many negative life events (M = 9.28 of 16). The number of negative life events was positively correlated with internalizing, but not with externalizing, problems. Participants described a variety of coping strategies. Most participants received emotional or instrumental social support, and were hopeful about their futures. Hardships were often alcohol- or poverty-related events, whereas hope was often centered on education.

KEYWORDS:

• Adjustment problems
• coping
• Karamojong
• life events
• resilience

Acknowledgments

We thank the participants for sharing their experiences with us. We would like to thank Smile Africa Ministries, Ruth Kahawa, and Michael De La Rocha. We express gratitude to Mary Stella Nakut and John Baptist Rupee for assistance with translation and interpreting. We also appreciate Hope 4 Kids International for assistance with logistical aspects of data collection. We thank the research assistants: Camille Sitto, Brittany Walton, and Samuel Dicarlo. Finally, we acknowledge the director of the T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State University, Richard Fabes, for his support.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Natalie D. Eggum-Wilkens

Natalie D. Eggum-Wilkens is an assistant professor in the T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State University. Broadly, her research interests are in children’s social and emotional adjustment. Her active research projects investigate children’s social withdrawal, social competence, adjustment problems, and resiliency in the United States and in international contexts. She has also contributed to the temperament and self-regulation literature. She is interested in, and teaches, latent variable modeling for longitudinal data.

Linlin Zhang

Linlin Zhang is a doctoral student in the T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State University. She received her master of science degree in developmental psychology from Peking University, China. Her research focuses on social and academic adjustment of socially withdrawn children and adolescents in various cultural contexts, with a particular focus on longitudinal data analyses and innovative statistical methodologies (e.g., social network analysis) for developmental science.

Flora Farago

Flora Farago is an assistant professor in human development and family studies at Stephen F. Austin State University. Flora has a background in developmental psychology and early childhood education. Flora’s mixed-methods research focuses on anti-bias education, gender and racial socialization, and prejudice formation in young children.