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Longitudinal Reciprocal Relationships Between Discrimination and Ethnic Affect or Depressive Symptoms Among Chinese American Adolescents

  • Empirical Research
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Abstract

Discrimination plays an important role in the development of ethnic minority adolescents. However, previous studies have often adopted a unidirectional model examining the influence of discrimination on adolescent development, thus leaving the potential reciprocal relationship between them understudied. Moreover, there is a dearth of studies on Chinese Americans in the discrimination literature. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the reciprocal relationships between discrimination and two measures of adolescent outcomes (i.e., ethnic affect and depressive symptoms) from early adolescence to emerging adulthood in Chinese Americans. Participants were 444 adolescents (54 % female), followed at four-year intervals, beginning at 7th or 8th grade (M age.wave1 = 13.03) in 2002, for a total of three waves. An examination of cross-lagged autoregressive models revealed two major findings. First, in contrast to the rejection–identification model, perceived discrimination at early adolescence negatively related to ethnic affect at middle adolescence. Conversely, ethnic affect at early adolescence also negatively related to discrimination at middle adolescence. These results held the same direction but became insignificant from middle adolescence to emerging adulthood. Second, perceived discrimination positively related to depressive symptoms across the studied developmental periods, and depressive symptoms positively related to perceived discrimination from middle adolescence to emerging adulthood. The strength of these longitudinal relationships did not change significantly across developmental periods or gender. These findings highlight the bidirectional relationship between perceived discrimination and adolescent outcomes; they also demonstrate the value of studying the discrimination experiences of Chinese Americans.

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Acknowledgments

Support for this research was provided through awards to Su Yeong Kim from (1) Eunice Kennedy Shriver NICHD 5R03HD051629-02 (2) Office of the Vice President for Research Grant/Special Research Grant from the University of Texas at Austin (3) Jacobs Foundation Young Investigator Grant (4) American Psychological Association Office of Ethnic Minority Affairs, Promoting Psychological Research and Training on Health Disparities Issues at Ethnic Minority Serving Institutions Grant (5) American Psychological Foundation/Council of Graduate Departments of Psychology, Ruth G. and Joseph D. Matarazzo Grant (6) California Association of Family and Consumer Sciences, Extended Education Fund (7) American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences, Massachusetts Avenue Building Assets Fund, and (8) Eunice Kennedy Shriver NICHD 5R24HD042849-13 grant awarded to the Population Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin. Correspondence concerning this article should be sent to Su Yeong Kim, Department of Human Development and Family Sciences, 108 E Dean Keeton St., Stop A2702, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712. E-mail: su.yeong.kim@utexas.edu.

Conflict of interest

The authors report no conflict of interests.

Author contributions

YH conceived of the study and drafted the manuscript; SYK created the study design and drafted portions of the manuscript; YW and YS and DO participated in the interpretation of the data and helped to draft the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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  1. Department of Human Development and Family Sciences, University of Texas at Austin, 108 East Dean Keeton Street, Stop A2702, Austin, TX, 78712, USA

    Yang Hou, Su Yeong Kim, Yijie Wang, Yishan Shen & Diana Orozco-Lapray

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  1. Yang Hou
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Hou, Y., Kim, S.Y., Wang, Y. et al. Longitudinal Reciprocal Relationships Between Discrimination and Ethnic Affect or Depressive Symptoms Among Chinese American Adolescents. J Youth Adolescence 44, 2110–2121 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-015-0300-6

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