[1] Hughes' research focuses on mental health and race, exploring the relation between social factors, individual experiences, racial attitudes, and cultural influences.
Following graduate school at Vanderbilt (1973–1979) where he worked under Walter R. Gove, he joined the Sociology Department at Virginia Tech as an assistant professor.
Mark Baldassare in his review wrote, "This book is likely to stimulate much-needed theorizing and systematic research.
[11] From 1992 to 1994, Hughes was a co-author on studies that came out of the National Comorbidity Survey (NCS) headed by Ronald C. Kessler then at the University of Michigan.
[15] Hughes explored the connection between race and well-being, addressing the paradox of African Americans' relatively good mental health despite facing more stressors and adverse social conditions.
Collaborating with K. Jill Kiecolt and Verna M. Keith, he linked a positive racial identity to higher self-esteem, mastery, and lower depression among African Americans, shedding light on their mental health advantage over whites.
[18] His early work found African Americans had lower quality of life than whites from 1972 to 1996, with consistent racial disparities across socioeconomic statuses.
[27] He participated in other studies showing that posttraumatic stress symptom severity indirectly intensified grief one year later,[28] and that trauma-exposed individuals exhibited reckless behavior due to worldview changes.