{"doi":"10.1093/jpepsy/jsac015","title":"Commentary: Centering Oppression in Research Methodology Toward Developing Interventions to Address Health Inequities","abstract":"Regular physical activity can promote cardiovascular, brain, and psychosocial health (Hillman et al., 2011; Janssen & Leblanc, 2010) and, thus, may benefit youths with congenital heart disease (CHD) who experience elevated risk for suboptimal cardiac, neurodevelopmental, and psychosocial outcomes (Cassidy et al., 2018). Jackson et al. (2021) conducted critical work to further our understanding of the individual-level mechanisms that might explain physical activity levels in adolescents with CHD by testing if physical activity levels were associated with theory of planned behavior (TPB) factors, that is, attitudes, perceived social norms, and perceived control (Ajzen, 1991). Both lower perceived social support and greater perceived barriers were associated with lower physical activity. Additionally, Jackson et al. go further to also assess disparities in physical activity by gender. Jackson et al. identified deficits in both TPB factors and physical activity levels in female adolescents with CHD (although gender did not moderate tested associations between TPB factors and physical activity) and concluded that the deficits in females compared to the male reference group might be best addressed through gender-tailored psychosocial interventions. These findings provide valuable knowledge about gender disparities in physical activity in adolescents with CHD and how we may target TPB factors to increase engagement in physical activity via psychosocial interventions. With regards to ameliorating gender disparities in physical activity in adolescents with CHD, the findings, conclusions, and interpretations of Jackson et al. may be further expanded upon by explicitly considering the social–structural inequalities subsumed within gender as a grouping variable (Corr et al., 2019; Cowley et al., 2021). Examining health disparities without explicit attention to health inequalities can unintentionally perpetuate “default” narratives that individuals, families, or groups bear responsibility for health behavior states (i.e., recommendations for individual-level interventions), that are largely attributable to social–structural inequalities (Shim, 2021). Quantitative methodologies used to represent disparities in health behaviors between groups of people are subject to biases in implementation and interpretation and, thus, require a critical examination to clarify how our methods shape our understanding of health disparities, their causes, and their remedies. Quantitative Critical Theory, an integration of quantitative methods with Critical Race Theory, calls to reform the use of quantitative methods and seat oppression and social–structural inequalities at the center of our quantitative research process (Garcia et al., 2018; Stage, 2007; Suzuki et al., 2021). For example, for Jackson et al., the construal of gender labels as also capturing historical experiences of sexism (temporally precedent to study assessment) and/or ongoing exposure to everyday sexism (temporally proximal to study assessment) might have led to different choices and conclusions throughout the research process. First, had Jackson et al. construed gender as a proxy for everyday experiences of sexism, they might have directly hypothesized that females, due to exposure to everyday sexism, would experience weaker associations between TPB factors and physical activity compared to males (Stock et al., 2017). Yet, Jackson et al. did not describe a theoretical rationale or hypothesis for why or how gender groups would vary in the direction of effect or strength of association between TPB factors and physical activity. Only the main effects of gender were theorized—that male adolescents with CHD would perceive more optimal status on TPB factors and engage in more physical activity when compared to female adolescents with CHD (i.e., both X and Y variables are more optimal in one group compared to a reference group). This main effect theoretical assumption appeared to lead to an anal","journal":"Journal of Pediatric Psychology","year":2022,"id":306042,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9605,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1000003,"name":"Caitlin Haxel","orcid":"0000-0001-8358-4600","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":580438,"name":"Jonathan N. 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