Abstract:

Immigrant youth are a growing and potentially vulnerable sector of society who may face multiple challenges. Research shows that exposure to both family conflict and discrimination predicts poor psychological outcomes for this population. However, the unique contributions of these stressors to adjustment, beyond the impact of daily hassles, has not been shown. Further, although cognitive appraisal has been shown to mediate the relationship between stressors and well-being, this mechanism has not been explored among immigrant youth. It was hypothesized that exposure to family conflict and discrimination would predict increased internalizing and externalizing symptoms and lower achievement, after controlling for daily hassles; that youth appraisal of family conflict and discrimination would mediate the relationship between exposure to these stressors and adjustment; and that daily hassles and migration trauma would predict more serious appraisal of family conflict and discrimination.

This study utilized a sample of 189 adolescents from African, Arab, Asian, Caribbean, European, and Latin American countries, enrolled in two international high schools within a large Northeastern city. More frequent family conflict was found to predict more youth-reported internalizing symptoms, even when controlling for other daily hassles. This was not confirmed for teacher-reported externalizing symptoms or achievement, nor was discrimination found to be an independent contributor to adjustment beyond daily hassles. The study also found that youth appraisal of discrimination seriousness mediated the relationship between discrimination and internalizing symptoms but not externalizing symptoms. Appraisal was not found to be a mediator of either stressor and externalizing symptoms or academic achievement, nor of family conflict and internalizing symptoms. Finally, the study found that the longer students spent away from their parents, the less seriously they appraised acculturative family conflict. Other stressors (war-related events and daily hassles) were not found to be significantly predictive of stressor appraisal.

This study provides new information regarding the perception of and response to stressors in an adolescent immigrant population. Measuring externally-rated indices of adjustment and distinguishing between exposure and response to stressors deepens our understanding of stress processes among adolescent immigrants. Such findings can inform targeted preventive interventions during the acculturation period.