Relationship Between Chinese-American Adolescent Cultural Orientation and Friendship Quality, with Parent-adolescent Communication as a Moderator

• In Event: Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Topic - Family Context & Processes

Abstract

Communication styles between parents and children develop early and have long term-implications for adolescents’ later communication and relationship with peers. Acculturation dissonance, also conceptualized as parent-adolescent gaps in cultural orientation, is defined as differences in adaptation to the values and norms of the host culture between immigrant children and their families, mainly due to children’s tendency to acculturate more quickly (Rogers-Sirin et al., 2014). Existing literature links strong family communication to strong adolescent friendship quality, as adolescents apply communication skills learned in the family context. Although studies have shown that parent-adolescent acculturation gaps are related to increased family conflict and poorer communication (Crane, Ngai, Larson, & Hafen, 2005), fewer studies have extended this to consider whether acculturation dissonance may be directly related to adolescent friendship quality. Furthermore, given the rapid rise of Chinese American immigrants in the United States (Echeverria-Estrada & Batalova, 2020), it is important to understand patterns of acculturation, family communication, and peer relationships in this group to inform early, culturally sensitive intervention.
The present study uses cross-sectional data from a socioeconomically diverse sample of adolescents and parents from Chinese American immigrant families. The study has two aims: 1) to examine the relation between parent-adolescent acculturation dissonance (measured as gaps in cultural orientation) and adolescent friendship quality; and 2) to test the role of parent-adolescent communication quality as a moderating factor in this relation. We hypothesize that greater generational acculturation dissonance will have a negative impact on friendship quality. Furthermore, we hypothesize that for families with strong parent-adolescent communication despite acculturation gaps, this strength will serve as a protective quality that eliminates or reduces this relationship.
The sample consisted of 137 adolescents (M age = 16.7, SD = 0.59, 52% females, 74.4% second generation) and their parents (84.8% Mothers) in Chinese American families from a metropolitan area in the northwestern United States. Parents and adolescents self-reported on cultural orientation using the Cultural and Social Acculturation Scale (CSAS, Chen & Lee, 1996), a bi-dimensional measure of both American (parent alpha=0.89; adolescent alpha = 0.81) and Chinese (parent alpha=0.77; adolescent alpha =0.76) cultural orientation. Communication was assessed using parent (alpha=0.92) and adolescent (Mother alpha=0.92; Father alpha=0.93) reports on the Parent-Adolescent Communication Scale (Barnes & Olson, 1982). Adolescents reported on friendship quality using the Quality of Adolescents’ Friendship Scale (Armsden & Greenberg, 1987; 25 items, alpha=0.64).
To address our first aim, we will calculate interaction terms between a) parent and adolescent Chinese cultural orientation, and b) the same for American orientation and relate these acculturation gap terms adolescent to friendship quality. With regard to the second aim, we will use confirmatory factor analysis to establish a measurement model for parent-adolescent communication to determine whether there is support for creating a latent factor of communication using both reporters as indicators, or whether parent and adolescent reports of communication are best considered in separate models. Subsequently, communication quality will be entered as a moderator (see Figure 1).

Authors

• Niki Chung, University of California - Berkeley
  Presenting Author

• Kaley Curtis, University of California, Berkeley
  Non-Presenting Author

• Qing Zhou, University of California - Berkeley
  Non-Presenting Author