Poster #176 - Latino Adolescents’ Emotional Support-Seeking from Parents: The Role of General and Cultural Factors

• In Event: 1-005 - Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Section - Race, Ethnicity, Culture, Context

Integrative Statement

Emotional support-seeking is an important coping strategy for adolescents (Compas, 1987) and has been linked to positive adjustment (Booth et. al, 1998; Burleson & Kunkel, 1996; Mccarty et al., 2005). Research highlights the significance of relationship quality in predicting adolescent support-seeking (Cavanaugh & Supple, 2012; Cavanaugh et al., 2015); however, less research has investigated how cultural factors, including familial cultural values, are related to this process. Nonetheless, research showcases the importance of the familism cultural value (i.e. reliance on family for support) for Latino families (Stein et al., 2014), suggesting that Latino adolescents with more familism endorsement may seek more emotional support from mothers. Contrarily, other work identifies that the respect familial cultural value (i.e. importance for respecting adults) may predict less emotional support seeking by individuals in collectivistic cultures due to the desire not to burden others with their problems (Chang, 2015). This question has not been tested in a sample of Latino youth, nor has research examined these questions considering adolescent support-seeking from fathers. The present study aims to fill this gap in the literature by (1)determining if the Latino cultural values of familism and respect are significantly correlated with Latino adolescent support-seeking behavior from both parents and (2)identifying whether familism and respect significantly predict Latino adolescents’ emotional support-seeking from parents above and beyond parent-adolescent relationship quality.

Participants for the study include 175 7th and 8th grade Latino adolescents from an emerging immigrant community in North Carolina. Adolescents completed a battery of questionnaires via laptop during an in-home visit. Measures included the Network of Relationships Inventory Relationship Qualities Version (satisfaction subscale—both parents), and Social Provisions Version (emotional support subscales—both parents) (Burhmaster & Furman, 2009; Furman & Burhmaster, 1985), and the Mexican American Cultural Values Scale (familism and respect subscales) (Knight et al., 2010).

We used a bivariate Pearson correlation to examine the relationship between cultural values and support seeking. Results found a relationship between familism and adolescent support-seeking from mothers (r=.264, p<.001) and fathers (r=.240, p<.01) as well as between respect and support seeking from mothers (r=.204, p<.001) and fathers (r=.211, p<.05). We next used two separate two-step multiple regression analyses to examine factors predicting supporting seeking. In each model, we entered adolescents’ report of their satisfaction with that parent in the first step, and adolescent report of familism and respect into the second step to determine if adolescent familism positively predicted support-seeking from each parent above and beyond relationship satisfaction, and if respect negatively predicted the same. In both models, relationship satisfaction significantly predicted youth support-seeking from that parent; however, neither familism nor respect added significant additional explained variance (See Tables).

These findings suggest that Latino familial cultural values are related to adolescent support-seeking behavior. They also identify that relationship quality is indeed an important predictor of Latino youth support seeking, from both parents. They further suggest that although cultural values may not explain additional variance in adolescent support-seeking behaviors, cultural factors are indeed related to this important process and should be further explored.

Authors

• Andrea Kulish, University of North Carolina - Greensboro
  Presenting Author

• Gabriela Livas Stein, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
  Non-Presenting Author