The Relation Between Bicultural Stress, Depressive Symptoms and Academic Outcomes

• In Event: 1-185 - Understanding the Impact of Sociocultural factors on Latino youth’s Mental Health and Academic Achievement

Integrative Statement

Latino adolescents move between different cultures between home and school on a daily basis, which may lead to bicultural stress for some youth. Bicultural stress is defined as the subjective perception of stress due to daily hassles from discrimination, within-group conflict, family generational conflict, and code-switching between two languages (Romero & Roberts, 2003). Bicultural stress has been shown to be associated with future depressive symptoms and risky behaviors among Latino immigrant youth (Cano et al., 2015; Schwartz et al., 2015), yet none have examined educational outcomes. While, there are some studies that explore how discrimination may impact adolescent academic success (Alfaro et al., 2009; Benner et al., 2011), there are few studies that examine how depressive symptoms may play a role in these relationships. This study is guided by the Integrative Model of Developmental Competencies of Minority Children (Garcia Coll et al., 1996), which takes a socio-ecological approach that recognizes the multiple contexts of society, school, and family that are shaped within racist and systemically oppressive systems. Based on acculturative theory and bicultural stress concepts we further argue that moving between these systems may feel stressful for some youth and will thus be associated with youth developmental competencies, such as academic outcomes. The Integrative Model argues that personal factors of well-being will moderate the association between societal factors and youth outcomes; given previous research on Latino youth well-being that have identified the pivotal role of depressive symptoms and hope we will examine how those factors moderate the relation between bicultural stress and academic outcomes.
In a cross-sectional survey study of low-income Latino adolescents (N=130; 57% female, 43% male, 9% immigrant, age M=16.23 years, Range=13-18) bicultural stress (Romero & Roberts, 2003), depressive symptoms (Radloff, 1977) and academic outcomes (academic satisfaction, intention to dropout, and GPA) (Guiffrida et al., 2013) were investigated (See Table 1 for Pearson Product Moment Correlations).
Multiple linear regression indicates that GPA (F(7,117)=2.51,R2=.13, p=.02) was significantly positively associated only with hope (B=.23, p=.01), after accounting for age and gender while including bicultural stress and depressive symptoms (See Table 2 for Multiple Linear Regression). Academic satisfaction (F(7,119)=3.34, R2=.16, p=.01) was significantly positively associated with hope (b=.35, p=.001; b=.20, p=.04) using a similar model. Intention to dropout (F(7,120)=3.89,R2=.19,p=.001 was significantly associated with more bicultural stress (b=.18,p=.04), less hope (b=-.24,p=.01), and an interaction (b=-.24, p=.01) such that intention to dropout was significantly higher for youth at high levels of bicultural stress and low levels of hope; whereas youth with higher levels of hope had low intentions to dropout at all levels of bicultural stress.
Academic outcomes were strongly associated with hopefulness of low-income Latino youth. Future studies will need to further investigate how intention to dropout of school is impacted by bicultural stress and hopefulness, particularly given that Latino youth have the highest rates of dropping out of high school compared to other ethnic groups (National Center for Education Statistics, 2014). We will discuss how consideration of a bicultural socioecological contexts play a role in understanding Latino youth academic outcomes and well-being.

Author

• Andrea Romero, University of Arizona
  Presenting Author