Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences最新文献

Three groups of children from Mexico and Central America are vulnerable to effects of US immigration policies: 1) foreign-born children who entered the US with undocumented immigrant parents; 2) unaccompanied children who entered the US alone; and 3) U.S.-born citizen children of undocumented immigrant parents. Despite the recent demographic growth of these youth, scholarship on their strengths and challenges is under-theorized and isolated within specific disciplines. Hence, service providers, researchers, and policymakers have insufficient research to inform their efforts to support the children's wellbeing. A group of scholars and service-providers with expertise in immigrant children convened to establish consensus areas and identify gaps in knowledge of undocumented, unaccompanied, and citizen children of undocumented immigrant parents. The primary goal was to establish a research agenda that increases interdisciplinary collaborations, informs clinical practice, and influences policies. This report summarizes key issues and recommendations that emerged from the meeting.

We know little about Mexican-American (MA) family adaptation to critical events in the informal caregiving experience but, in these days of economic and social turmoil, sons must sometimes step up to provide personal care for their aging mothers. This article compares two empirically real cases of MA males who provided such care, in lieu of a female relative. The cases are selected from a federally-funded, descriptive, longitudinal, mixed methods study of 110 MA caregivers and their care recipients. In case-oriented research, investigators can generate propositions (connected sets of statements) that reflect their findings and conclusions, and can be tested against subsequent cases: Caregiving strain and burden in MA males may have more to do with physical and emotional costs than financial ones; MA males providing personal care for their mothers adopt a matter-of-fact approach as they act "against taboo"; and this approach is a new way to fulfill family obligations.

The authors reviewed the acculturation literature with the goal of identifying measures used to assess acculturation in Hispanic populations in the context of studies of health knowledge, attitudes, and behavior change. Twenty-six acculturation measures were identified and summarized. As the Hispanic population continues to grow in the United States, there is a need to develop rigorous acculturation measures that include health indicators. Findings suggest that multidimensional acculturation scales are robust measurement tools when assessing nationality, cultural awareness, media and language preferences, and health status. Furthermore, aspects of Hispanic cultural lifestyle, such as beliefs about nutrition and physical activity, affect health care utilization, treatment, and prevention. Health communication researchers should consider aspects of cultural values and beliefs, and their impact on health status, for future research and health promotion interventions.

This study examined the validity of the Klonoff and Landrine (1994) illness-belief scale when applied to Latino college students (n=156; 34% male, 66% female) at high-risk for future diabetes onset. Principal factor analysis yielded four significant factors - emotional, folk-beliefs, punitive, gene/hereditary - which accounted for 64.5% of variance and provided a culturally-relevant Latino perspective of the causes of diabetes. Additional analyses by age, gender, immigrant status and psychological acculturation revealed significant differences by age on the emotional and folk illness factors and a negative correlation between assimilation and endorsement of the emotional factor. The implication of these four illness factors for predicting health-related behaviors and health-outcomes among young Latinos was discussed as were recommendations for future research.

The present study sought to examine Latino intercultural competence via two separate methodologies. Phase 1 entailed discovering and generating themes regarding the features of intercultural competence based on semistructured interviews of 15 Latino adults. Phase 2 included conducting a cultural consensus analysis from the quantitative responses of 46 Latino adults to determine the cultural model of intercultural competence. The major results indicated that the participants, despite variations in socioeconomic and generational statuses, shared a common knowledge base regarding the competencies needed for Latinos to successfully navigate different cultures. Overall, the cultural model of Latino intercultural competence includes a set of skills that integrates traditional cultural values along with attributes of self-efficacy. The findings are discussed within a competence-based conceptualization of cultural adaptation and potential advancements in acculturation research.

This article reports the characteristics of Latino day laborers who have sex with female commercial sex workers (CSWs). A sample of 450 day laborers in Los Angeles was utilized. Multivariate logistic regression was used to determine the association of independent variables with the likelihood of having sex with a CSW. Overall, 26% of the 450 day laborers reported having had sex with a CSW in the previous 12 months. A lower likelihood of having sex with a CSW was found for those with more than six years of education and for those who were married and living with their spouses. A higher likelihood of having sex with a CSW was found for those who met the criteria for harmful drinking or drug dependence. Commercial sex work has been associated with sexually transmitted infections and other problems among clients of CSWs and warrants further attention by providers working with day laborers.

This paper presents analyses of a representative sample of US Latinos (N=2540) to investigate whether family cohesion moderates the effects of cultural conflict on psychological distress. The results for the aggregated Latino group suggests a significant association between family cohesion and lower psychological distress and the combination of strong family cohesion with presence of family cultural conflict was associated with higher psychological distress. However, this association differed by Latino groups. We found no association for Puerto Ricans, Cuban results were similar to the aggregate group, family cultural conflict in Mexicans was associated with higher psychological distress, while family cohesion in Other Latinos was associated with higher psychological distress. Implications of these findings are discussed to unravel the differences in family dynamics across Latino subethnic groups.

This article describes results from the Oregon Latino Youth Survey, which was designed to identify factors that promoted or hindered academic success for Latino middle- and high-school youngsters. The study samples included a total of 564 Latino and non-Latino students and parents. Analyses showed that Latino students reported a high frequency of discriminatory experiences and institutional barriers at school, and that they and their parents were more likely to experience institutional barriers compared to non-Latinos. Further, Latino students and parents reported that they/their youngsters were more likely to dropout of school compared to non-Latinos. Path models showed lower acculturation and more institutional barriers were related to less academic success for Latino students. More parent academic encouragement and staff extracurricular encouragement were associated with better academic outcomes for Latino students. Finally, family socioeconomic disadvantage had an indirect effect on Latino youngster academic success, through effects on parent monitoring and school involvement.

Data from the in-school survey of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health on girls and boys who claim a Mexican, Puerto Rican, or Cuban heritage were employed to test two hypotheses: (1) Participating in a school-based sport is associated with self-esteem, and (2) school attachment and a sense of physical well-being mediate this relationship. The first hypothesis was partially confirmed in that participation in school sports was associated with self-esteem among Mexican American adolescent girls and boys, Puerto Rican girls, and Cuban American boys, but not among Cuban American girls nor Puerto Rican boys. The second hypothesis was confirmed in that, where there was a significant relationship between participating in a school sport and self-esteem, school attachment and physical well-being mediated this relationship. The results underscore the need to study psychosocial processes separately among Latino subgroups and to examine gender within each subgroup.