Psychological adjustment of Korean-born adolescents adopted by American families

The purpose of the study is to find the intercorrelation among exogenous latent variables (parental support of ethnic background and positive parent-child relationship) and endogenous latent variables (collective self-esteem, and psychological adjustment) for Korean-born adolescent adoptees through structural equation modeling (PROC-CALIS: SAS). Data analysis was based on 241 respondents who were drawn from 28 states of the US. The mean age of the subjects was 14 with males and females comprising approximately 43 per cent and 57 per cent, respectively. Especially, for this study, the measurement scales for parental support of ethnic identity and shame about ethnic origin were developed.;The analyses represent an initial attempt to examine the relationship among constructs that potentially influence the transracially adopted child's psychological adjustment. With the success of finding evidence for collective self-esteem on successful psychological adjustment, all hypothesized effects among parent's support of ethnic background and child's collective self-esteem variables were supported by the data. As was the case with results concerning the relationships among the adolescents' psychological adjustment variables, one expected effect of family context factors was also supported. The significant effect of the level of the positive parent-child relationship was positive. In addition to the results associated with the hypothesized model effects, there were statistically significant relationships between parent's support of ethnic background and positive parent-child relationship.;The findings of the study stress the transaction between adoptive parents and children in terms of sharing experiences of children's ethnic socialization and establishes that positive relationship is the fundamental factor for children to develop a unique process of identity development. The outcomes of the study suggest that social workers have to continue to study the diverse needs of adoptive parents and develop appropriate intervention strategies in order to improve family functioning.