Analyses reveal that there are mean differences in three parenting constructs: prosocial rewards, psychological costs, and problem solving. Specifically, African American parents exhibited lower levels of prosocial rewards (r = −.34, p < .001), higher levels of psychological costs (r = .46, p < .001), and lower problem solving (r = −.19, p < .01) when compared to European Americans. MGCFA models were tested in which the mean is set to zero in the European American group and estimated in the African American group as the deviation from zero. These tests confirmed African American parents demonstrated significantly lower prosocial rewards and problem solving and significantly more psychological costs. No mean-level differences were found for antisocial rewards or for the youth variables of drug expectancies, drug initiation, and antisocial beliefs across African American and European American youth.
