Dissertation
EMOTION REGULATION FLEXIBILITY AS A PROTECTIVE FACTOR AGAINST IMMIGRATION-SPECIFIC SOCIOCULTURAL RISK
Washington State University
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
01/2021
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7273/000005450
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/119195
Abstract
Mental health concerns in college are often accompanied by somatic, social, academic, and substance use problems. At the same time, college students from immigrant backgrounds account for 28% of the student population. It is beneficial to clarify the protective factors that mitigate and risk factors that impede health outcomes among immigrant college students. One potential protective factor is emotion regulation flexibility (ERF); immigrants, who often live across cultural contexts, may benefit from the ability to flexibly regulate their emotions in different contexts. We tested the buffering effect of ERF against the detrimental effect of sociocultural risk on mental and physical health outcomes in a sample of first- and second-generation immigrants. A total of 295 college students participated. About forty percent of the sample were first-generation immigrants who lived 10.31 years in the U.S. (SD = 8.71) on average; the remaining students were second-generation immigrants. Participants self-reported demographic information, acculturative stress, experiences of racial discrimination, depression, anxiety, physical symptoms, sleep difficulties, emotion regulation flexibility, social support and ethnic identity in an online survey. A moderation analysis in an SEM framework was conducted with the lavaan package in R to examine the moderating effect of ERF on the association between sociocultural risk, mental and physical health. Gender and length of time in the U.S were included as covariates. Mental and Physical health problems were significantly predicted by the interaction between sociocultural risk and ERF. These findings suggest ERF protects immigrants against the negative health consequences of sociocultural risk. Future efforts to support immigrants’ well-being might investigate how to best support the development of ERF.
Metrics
69 File views/ downloads
43 Record Views
Details
- Title
- EMOTION REGULATION FLEXIBILITY AS A PROTECTIVE FACTOR AGAINST IMMIGRATION-SPECIFIC SOCIOCULTURAL RISK
- Creators
- SuYeon Lee
- Contributors
- Sara F. Waters (Advisor)Brian F. French (Committee Member)Louise Parker (Committee Member)Thomas Power (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Department of Human Development
- Theses and Dissertations
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 74
- Identifiers
- 99900592055901842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Dissertation