Assessing immigration-related family conflict: Initial scale development and testing

• In Event: Fronteras en Casa: Immigration Conflict, Acculturation Gaps and Psychological Well-being Within Latinx families

Abstract

Immigration can be a stressful life event, and it can take its toll on the whole family system even if some family members (e.g., children) never personally experience the immigration process (Lui, 2015; Patel et al., 2016). Given that immigration often takes place with an explicit intention for creating better lives for children (Bacallao & Smokowski, 2007; Fuligni, 1998) immigration-related family conflict may be particularly stressful for adolescents in newcomer families. Currently, there are no scales available that assess immigration-related family conflict, yet it is likely to be a distinct factor that contributes to well-being of family members. We conceptualize immigration-related conflict as disagreements among family members (i.e., parent-child, parent-parent) about topics directly linked to immigration and immigration-related stressors. Immigration-related topics differ from general topics of conflict because of their distinctive relevance to newcomer families. For example, although all families may argue about money (general), only newcomer families are likely to argue about sending money to the home country (immigration-related). In the current study, we aimed to develop and test two new scales to measure immigration-related parent-child conflict and immigration-related interparental conflict in Latino newcomer families. Moreover, we sought to assess the associations between immigration-related family conflicts (versus general conflict) and various aspects of adolescents’ adjustment (i.e., school engagement, depressive symptoms, loneliness, anger, stress, general efficacy, health, and alcohol use).

Quantitative (i.e., self-report survey data, N = 69) and qualitative (i.e., interviews, N = 10) data were collected from Latino adolescents participating in an ongoing longitudinal study in a Southwestern state. The majority of participants were in 10th grade (93%), more than half were girls (57%), most were from Mexican American backgrounds (82%), and all had at least one foreign-born parent (20% 1st generation, 80% 2nd generation). Results from preliminary reliability analyses showed that our new immigration-related parent-child and immigration-related interparental conflict scales had high internal reliability (i.e., .82 and .88 respectively). Further steps will be taken to establish reliability and validity of the scales. For example, based on qualitative interview data, we will decide whether any items should be dropped from the scales (based on their comprehensibility level). Moreover, correlation results (see Table 1) suggest that immigration-related family conflict may be associated with different aspects of adolescents’ adjustment compared to general family conflict. For example, higher general parent-child conflict was significantly correlated with lower general efficacy and higher depressive symptoms, but immigration-related parent-child conflict was correlated with worse general health and lower school engagement. Using Mplus, future analyses will examine the relative importance of these stressors (i.e., general versus immigration-related family conflict) in an SEM framework in relation to each outcome. Although the sample size is relatively small at this point, data collection is in progress for both the quantitative and qualitative data. The development and testing of these two scales will provide a new tool for researchers to further investigate potentially unique sources of stress for Latino adolescents in immigrant families. Understanding these stressors may allow prevention and intervention programs to capitalize their resources by providing targeted support.

Authors

• Farin Bakhtiari, California State University, Fresno
  Presenting Author

• Aprile D Benner, University of Texas at Austin
  Non-Presenting Author

• Karen Limón, University of Texas at Austin
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sarah Salas, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Non-Presenting Author