Chinese American acculturation, household income, parental education, and parent-child agreement on the Child Behavior Checklist

Despite significant mental health needs, Chinese Americans tend to under-utilize mental health services. Even when Chinese Americans seek professional assistance, the efficacy of that help may be reduced by underreporting. Consequently, it is critical to understand the influence of acculturation level and factors such as household income and parental education level. This issue is especially important in the assessment of emotional and behavioral disorders for the descendants of Chinese Americans. Because gathering data from multiple sources in clinical assessment is considered best practice, the relationship between parents' perceptions and their children's self-report has clinical significance. Two research questions were addressed. First, what is the correlation between the ratings of Chinese American mothers and their children using the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) and Youth Self Report (YSR)? Second, what roles do mothers' and children's acculturation levels, household incomes, and parental education level play in predicting discrepancies between mothers and children's scores? A correlational analysis enabled the detection of parent-child agreement for syndrome and composite scale scores. The parent-child correspondence was moderate. However, the agreement was higher for externalizing behaviors than internalizing problems. Multiple regression examined the ability of parents' and adolescents' acculturation level, household income, and parental education level, to predict the absolute difference scores on the Internalizing Problems, Externalizing Problems, and Total Problems on the CBCL and YSR. Adolescents' acculturation level and household income were significant predictors for discrepant Internalizing Problems scores. The implications for the parent-child concordance in the assessment and interventions for emotional and behavioral problems in Chinese American adolescents were twofold. First, Chinese American youth and mothers provided evidence against the "model minority" myth that is often associated with this population. Second, the fact that acculturation level, household income, and parental education level were not important predictors in detecting parent-child discrepancies for Externalizing and Total Problems are likely the results of the influence of other cultural and demographic variables. The results of this study also indicated that cultural variation, such as acculturation is an important variable to consider when assessing the emotional and behavioral problems in Chinese-American adolescents.