Short-term and long-term effects of a culture-specific self-affirmation intervention to promote school adjustment of adolescents of migrant and refugee backgrounds

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The purpose of the project is to test whether a brief self-affirmation writing intervention prevents declines in academic and socioemotional adjustment in the face of acculturation-related stress such as experiences of discrimination. We focus on adolescents of migrant and refugee background, including Turkish-heritage, Syrian-heritage, and Aussiedler (from the former Soviet Union) adolescents to represent recent and established migrant groups who may experience different levels of acculturation-related stress. We build on important prior work rooted in three research areas: acculturative stress, self-affirmation theory and self-determination theory (SDT), to test whether a self-affirmation writing intervention can enhance a sense of relatedness, competence, and autonomy, and ultimately improve the academic and socioemotional well-being of adolescents of migrant and refugee background. Prior work has focused on how self-affirmation writing interventions promote a greater sense of relatedness which boosts academic achievement. In our study we test whether this intervention would also enhance the other two key aspects of SDT, autonomy and competence, to lead to more positive academic and socioemotional adjustment. In addition, we test whether the intervention is more effective for some groups compared to others. Because the effects of self-affirmation writing interventions are stronger when administered during a more sensitive transitional period we expect that the intervention will show greater effects for newer (Syrian-heritage) versus longer-term migrants (Turkish-heritage and Aussiedler) or German youth without immigrant background. We aim to recruit 600 adolescents at the beginning of their first year at secondary school (i.e., another point of transition) from a culturally diverse urban city in Germany to participate in this longitudinal study. This is a significant opportunity to expose more recent and more established migrant background adolescents to an intervention that is simple in its implementation and that has already proven successful in reducing the achievement gap (between ethnic majority and ethnic minority children) in the United States. Research findings will make important contributions beyond what has been found in prior research in the three areas listed above. Findings may also extend self-affirmation theory by identifying additional mechanisms by which self-affirmation interventions work.