Perceived discrimination stress and college adjustment: Does differentiation of self play a role in this relationship for an urban population of minority college students

The current study explored the relationship between perceived discrimination stress and college adjustment, taking into account the possible moderation effects of differentiation of self on these variables. Gender, socioeconomic status, social support and ethnic identity were controlled for. Participants included 171 first or second semester undergraduate minority freshman students at a large northeastern urban university (133 females and 38 males, aged 18 to 25 years old, M = 18.88, SD = 1.53) who completed a demographics questionnaire and five self-report assessment measures via the psychology department's online study system. Assessment measures included the Student Adaptation to College Questionnaire (SACQ), Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS), Differentiation of Self Inventory (DSI), The Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM), and the Perceived Racism Scale (PRS). Negative feelings associated with perceived discrimination stress were negatively correlated with both Total Differentiation of Self score and Emotional Reactivity score. The effect size of these relationships are in the small to medium range, explaining 5.5% and 7.9% of the variability respectively. Differentiation of self was not found to moderate the relationship between perceived discrimination stress, as measured by the PRS, and college adjustment as measured by the SACQ Total, SACQ Academic and SACQ Personal/Emotional subscales. The process of college adjustment for minority students is multidimensional and influenced by the cultural and ethnic constitution of the university environment.;Keywords: perceived discrimination stress, differentiation of self, college adjustment, emotional reactivity.