Youths' Emotion Regulation: Mediators and Moderators

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The proposed study, "Youths' Emotion Regulation in Korean Immigrant Families," is a second revision of an application submitted in response to the NIMH Program Announcement (PAR-04-010) for the Behavioral Science Track Award for Rapid Transition (B-START). One year of funding is requested to conduct a pilot study investigating the influence of culture on family conflict and adolescents' anger regulation and subsequent externalizing and internalizing symptoms in Korean immigrant families. Adolescent depression and conduct disorders are significant public health concerns, and very little research has been conducted on cultural differences in malleable family processes associated with these mental health problems among ethnically diverse populations. Findings from this study will represent an initial step in launching a program of research around these issues which have major clinical implications for more culturally competent prevention and intervention efforts in addressing adolescent psychopathology. The proposed study is guided by two specific aims: 1) to develop and test the psychometric adequacy of study measures with a sample of N = 160 Korean American adolescents and their primary caregivers; 2) to test hypothesized moderating and mediating relationships in a conceptual model which identifies culturally-based self-construals, family conflict, and anger regulation as key variables associated with the development of internalizing and externalizing symptoms among Korean American adolescents. Within this conceptual model, youths' anger regulation is hypothesized to mediate the influence of family conflict on externalizing symptoms. Results from the proposed pilot study will provide data on the psychometric properties of the study's measures as applied to Korean American youths and their parents as well as preliminary empirical data for this conceptual model so that a later grant proposal can be submitted to investigate these relations longitudinally in Korean and other immigrant populations.