Cultural Effects on Stress, Coping, and Symptom Expression

描述（由申请人提供）：尽管心理学和相关领域通常将自己定义为人类普遍行为的科学，但在很大程度上，它们已经发展成为欧美行为的欧美科学。未能更充分地考虑文化差异对人类行为和情感的潜在影响已经产生了一系列后果，其中最重要的可能是，该领域得出的结论是，构念是作为主要影响相关的，而事实上，它们可能是通过涉及文化过程的更复杂的互动关系相关的。拟议项目的总体目的是增加我们对文化和文化差异如何与人类行为和情感功能相关的理解，特别关注所谓的“压力-应对-症状表现”系统，最终目标是生成有助于修改或发展具有文化信息的社会心理干预措施的数据。在拟议的项目中，将从1000名越南和1000名越南裔美国青少年中获得横断面问卷数据。将在间隔三个月的三个时间点从每组500人的子集中获得纵向访谈数据。数据将侧重于(a)有压力的生活事件，(b)应对方式和策略，(c)心理健康症状，以及(d)远端文化以及更近端的变量（例如，集体主义与个人主义；分别与症状相关的污名）。分析将(a)确定越南和越南裔美国青少年在他们感到压力的生活事件方面的横截面差异程度，青少年用来应对这些压力事件的策略类型，以及当这些应对尝试不成功时可能出现的症状表现（如情感问题、躯体化、行为问题等）；(b)确定横断面群体差异与文化变量相关的程度；(c)建立生活事件、应对策略和症状表现之间的纵向关系模型，并确定这些关系受文化变量影响的程度；(b)比较越南和越南裔美国青少年的模型，以确定这些关系在不同文化群体之间是否存在差异，如果存在差异，这些差异是否由文化变量介导。最后，将对结果进行审查，以确定为越南裔美国人，最终是亚裔美国人青少年制定文化知情干预措施的潜在因素。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Despite the fact that psychology and related fields generally have conceptualized themselves as science of universal human behavior, for the most part they have developed as Euro-American science of Euro-American behavior. Failure to consider more fully potential effects of cultural differences on human behavior and emotion has had a number of consequences, the foremost of which probably is that the field has reached conclusions about constructs being related as main effects when in fact they may be related via more complex interactive relations involving cultural processes. The overall purpose of the proposed project is to increase our understanding of how culture and cultural variation are related to human behavioral and emotional functioning, with a particular focus on what might be called the "stress - coping - symptom manifestation" system, with the ultimate goal of generating data that are useful for modifying or developing culturally informed psychosocial interventions. In the proposed project, cross-sectional questionnaire data will be obtained from 1000 Vietnamese and 1000 Vietnamese-American adolescents. Longitudinal interview data will be obtained from subsets of 500 of each of these groups, at three time points spaced three months apart. Data will focus on (a) stressful life events, (b) coping styles and strategies, (c) mental health symptoms, and (d) distal cultural as well as more proximal variables (e.g., collectivism vs. individualism; stigma associated with symptoms, respectively). Analyses will (a) determine the extent to which Vietnamese and Vietnamese-American adolescents differ cross-sectionally in regards to the life events they find stressful, the types of strategies that the adolescents use to cope with these stressful events, and the symptom manifestations (such as affective problems; somatization, conduct problems, etc.) that may occur when these coping attempts are not successful; (b) determine the extent to which cross-sectional group differences are related to cultural variables; (c) model longitudinal relations between life events, coping strategies, and symptom manifestations and determine the extent to which these relations are influenced by the cultural variables; (b) compare models the Vietnamese and Vietnamese-American adolescents to determine whether these relations differ across cultural groups and if they do, whether these differences are mediated by the cultural variables. Finally, results will be reviewed to identify potential factors relevant for developing culturally-informed interventions for Vietnamese- American, and ultimately Asian-American, adolescents. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The present project focuses on increasing our understanding of how culture and cultural variation are related to mental health and mental illness symptomatology, with the ultimate goal of improving the quality of mental health interventions for different subgroups within our population. It therefore is directly relevant to public health.