Fear of Deportation and Hispanic Early Adolescent Substance Use: a Moderated Mediation Model of Stress and Hope.

Reports of deportation can create a state of chronic fear in children living in mixed-status immigrant families over their own or a loved one's potential deportation. One indicator of health disparities among youth is elevated rates of alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use (ATOD). Yet little is known about the effects of fear of deportation (FOD) on ATOD or what might promote resilience. We explore the associations between FOD and ATOD use, how stress mediates this relationship, and whether hope moderates the mediated pathway from FOD to ATOD. Participants were 200 first- and second-generation 7th grade Hispanic youth (49% female) assessed across three waves of data. A moderated mediation model tested the indirect effect of FOD on ATOD through stress and whether hope moderated these associations. FOD was measured by the Family Fear of Deportation Scale. Snyder's Children's Hope Scale measured hope. Stress was measured by a short version of Pediatric Psychological Stress Measure. ATOD was adapted from the Monitoring the Future project. FOD was not directly associated with ATOD use. However, this path was fully mediated by stress. Hope significantly moderated the path from FOD to stress such that a one unit increase in hope completely offset the effects of FOD on stress. Hope did not moderate the path from stress to ATOD use. Interventions that increase awareness of deportation trauma, alleviate stress, and promote hope may help prevent, delay initiation into, and/or decrease ATOD among Hispanic first- and second-generation youth.

Preventing substance use among Latino youth: Initial results from a multistate family-based program focused on youth academic success.

Background: Early initiation of alcohol or other substance use places adolescents at high risk for subsequent substance use disorders. Research on preventing substance use among Latino youth significantly lags behind the growth of this population.Objectives: To assess the effects of a family-based intervention on past 30-day substance use in a population of Latino early adolescents (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03642106).Methods: A first study followed a sample of 265 Latino adolescents (51% female) over 4 years (7th thru 10th grades) using an interrupted time series design to compare pre- to post-intervention trajectories. The second study compared post-trajectory slopes from the intervention group to a subsample of participants from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY) who identified as Latino and were matched on age and gender. Both studies used a zero-inflated Poisson modeling approach.Results: A piecewise random intercept growth model showed non-significant differences between pre- to post-intervention trajectories for both the probability and frequency of alcohol (p = .30, .47) and tobacco use (p = .10, .37), and a significant increase in the probability of illegal drug use (p < .01) but not frequency (p = .65). The NLSY group significantly increased their probability of use across substances (all p < .01), and increased their frequency of use for alcohol (p < .05) and tobacco (p < .01).Conclusion: Longitudinal assessments comparing Latino youth to a non-equivalent control group indicate that strengthening family involvement in youths' schooling and promoting youth personal agency can prevent and/or reduce substance use during a developmental period in which use traditionally increases.

Immigration-related arrest, parental documentation status, and depressive symptoms among early adolescent Latinos.

OBJECTIVES: Experiencing an immigration-related arrest of a family member adversely impacts youth well-being, yet the role of parental documentation status for exacerbating adverse mental health outcomes following these arrests has not been investigated. METHOD: Using a general population sample of Latino 7th-grade students in an urban public school district in the south-central United States (N = 611), we examined the relationship between an immigration-related arrest of a family member and depressive symptoms as well as the moderating associations of perceived parental documentation status. RESULTS: Using ordinary least squares regression, findings indicate that experiencing or witnessing an immigration-related arrest of a family member is significantly associated with higher rates of depressive symptoms. Moreover, parental citizenship status has a moderating effect; depressive symptoms are magnified among youth who report that both of their parents have undocumented legal status. CONCLUSIONS: The study findings suggest that there are significant consequences for youth well-being when a family member is arrested for immigration-related violations. Further, among youth whose parents are both undocumented, there appears to be a compounding effect on mental health. Immigration policies, programs, and schools need to consider the emotional needs of youth who have undocumented parents, particularly in the context of elevated immigration enforcement. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Latino Parent-Child English Language Fluency: Implications for Maternal School Involvement.

Latino parents have lower levels of school involvement compared to other ethnic groups, which is often attributed-though not tested-to low English language proficiency. Using a population-based sample of 637 7th grade Latino youth attending an urban school district, we find no significant difference in maternal school involvement when mothers and students are either both fluent in English or both non-fluent. When students are more fluent than their mothers, however, maternal school involvement is significantly lower, suggesting that schools may need to take additional steps to encourage parental involvement when there is language dissonance between parents and their children.

Parental documentation status and academic attitudes and expectations among early adolescent latinos.

Many Latino youth are U.S. citizens but live with parents whose immigration status is unauthorized. The association between parental documentation status and early adolescent academic attitudes and expectations is unclear. Using a general population sample of urban 7th grade students who self-identified as Latino in the South Central U.S. (n = 514), we examine the associations between parental documentation status and youth attitudes about the importance of graduating high school and college and expectations of the likelihood of completing high school and attending college. Findings suggest that parent documentation status is not associated with attitudes toward the importance of high school and college among Latino early adolescents, but it is significantly associated with perceptions of the likelihood of achievement. Thus, parent immigration status may be an educational barrier that needs to be addressed early for Latino youth, as efforts in high school may be too late for some students.

Are Negative Peer Influences Domain Specific? Examining the Influence of Peers and Parents on Externalizing and Drug Use Behaviors.

Most studies tend to characterize peer influences as either positive or negative. In a sample of 1815 youth from 14 different schools in Caracas, Venezuela, we explored how two types of peer affiliations (i.e., deviant and drug-using peers) differentially mediated the paths from positive parenting to youth's externalizing behavior and licit and illicit drug use. We used Zero Inflated Poisson models to test the probability of use and the extent of use during the past 12 months. Results suggested that peer influences are domain specific among Venezuelan youth. That is, deviant peer affiliations mediated the path from positive parenting to youth externalizing behaviors, and peer drug-using affiliations mediated the paths to the drug use outcomes. Mediation effects were partial, suggesting that parenting explained unique variance in the outcomes after accounting for both peer variables, gender, and age. We discuss implications for the development of screening tools and for prevention interventions targeting adolescents from different cultures.

Opportunities to use drugs and the transition to drug use among adolescents from Caracas, Venezuela.

Few studies have examined exposure to drug use and the lag between exposure and use. This paper estimates prevalence of opportunity to use a substance, for use, and for use given an opportunity to use among a sample of Venezuelan adolescents. Several covariates on the opportunity to use and the transition to use are also examined. Findings show that lifetime prevalence of substance use among Venezuelan adolescents increases dramatically and more closely resembles rates among US and European samples when having had an opportunity to use was taken into account. A majority of youth who transitioned to use did so the same year exposure occurred, and females had a shorter time difference compared to males. Covariates primarily predicted exposure rather than having used after controlling for exposure, and their effects varied by substance. Implications for prevention efforts are discussed.

Measuring Anxiety Among Latino Immigrant Populations: Within-Country and Between-Country Comparisons.

Anxiety is the most prevalent mental health disorder among adults worldwide. Given its increased prevalence among migrants due to their marginalized position in the societies where they reside, psychometric evaluations of anxiety measures such as the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7) are needed for use with migrants. The present study is the first attempt to compare the structure of GAD-7 scores for (a) different Latino groups in the same country and (b) the same Latino group in two different countries. Using three samples of Mexican and Venezuelan migrants (total N = 933), we provide reliability and validity evidence of the GAD-7 for use with adult Latino migrants. Utilizing confirmatory factor analysis and item response theory, we demonstrate that the GAD-7 is internally consistent, possesses a strong single-factor structure, and generates scores with equivalent psychometric properties. GAD-7 is appropriate for use with Mexican and Venezuelan migrants across differing gender groups and education levels.

Hope for Latino immigrant youth: A longitudinal test of Snyder's Children's Hope Scale.

Objective: To examine the psychometric properties of Snyder's Children's Hope Scale (CHS) with first- and second-generation Latino immigrant youth, using item response theory, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, and measurement invariance tests. Background: Stress experienced by youth in 2020 has heightened interest in resilience factors such as hope. The CHS is widely used to measure hope but has not been validated for longitudinal assessments with immigrant populations. Methods: Participants were 233 low socioeconomic status first- and second-generation Latino immigrant youth (50.43% female, 62% U.S.-born, and 81% of Mexican heritage). Data were collected at two timepoints spanning 4 weeks. Results: Rather than the original six-item two-dimensional scale, our results supported a four-item one-dimensional scale, with excellent model fit, strong invariance across time, by gender and generation status, good reliability (α = .81), and the expected negative association with stress. Conclusions: The four-item Hope scale is suitable for longitudinal assessments with first- and second-generation Latino immigrant populations and can be used for examining differences by gender and generation status in research and practice to assess youth resilience. Implications: This study underscores the need for practitioners and researchers to rigorously investigate the psychometric properties of a measure before its use with diverse populations.

Immigration Enforcement and Hispanic Youth Substance Use: Is Depression a Mediator?

Hispanic adolescents report earlier onset and higher substance use rates than their non-Hispanic White and Black peers. This study examines the associations between the immigration-related arrest of a family member and substance use among Hispanic early adolescents and explores the mediating role of depressive symptoms as the mechanism explaining the association. We apply a mediated multiple linear regression analysis on 661 Hispanic youth attending 7th grade in an urban school district in a south-central, new arrival state. We found that Hispanic early adolescents who experienced the immigration-related arrest of a family member reported significantly higher substance use than Hispanic youth who did not experience the arrest of a family member due to immigration enforcement. Moreover, we found this relationship to be fully mediated by depressive symptoms. Findings suggest that even though the majority of Hispanic youth in the U.S. are citizens, experiencing the immigration-related arrest of a family member is not uncommon and has critical implications for poor mental health and maladaptive coping behaviors.

PROMIS Pediatric Psychological Stress Measure: Validity for immigrant Latino youth.

Objective: This study assesses the psychometric properties of the four- and eight-item versions of the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) Pediatric Psychological Stress Measure (PPSM) for use with Latino immigrant adolescents. Background: Immigrant Latino youth are exposed to numerous stressors that can have consequences affecting health well into adulthood. However, few studies have assessed the suitability of psychosocial measures for this group. Methods: Participants included 286 first- and second-generation immigrant Latino youth in middle school in an urban school district in the United States. Analyses included tests for reliability, validity, item characteristics, and measurement invariance across differing levels of acculturation and gender groups. Results: Both the four- and the eight-item PPSM are internally consistent, have strong construct validity, and strict factorial invariance across differing levels of acculturation. The four-item PPSM demonstrates strict invariance, but the eight-item version shows only configural invariance by gender. Conclusion: The PPSM is a rigorous measure when assessing immigrant Latino youth stress level. The four-item PPSM is brief, simple to administer, and appropriate for use with Latino youth across differing levels of acculturation and gender groups. Implications: The four-item PPSM lessens respondent fatigue and may be incorporated into tools practitioners and researchers use to assess perceived stress among immigrant Latino youth.

Ethnic Differences in the Effects of Five Disciplinary Techniques on Subsequent Externalizing Behavior Problems.

To identify disciplinary alternatives to replace spanking, this study investigated ethnic differences in the associations of five disciplinary techniques with subsequent externalizing behavior problems in a national sample of 7- to 11-year-olds with ANCOVAs and difference-score analyses. Most techniques led to significant reductions in externalizing problems for African-Americans or Hispanics, but only after overcoming known biases in ANCOVA and not for other European-Americans. Privilege removal had the most significantly effective results, followed by grounding. Sending children to their room and spanking significantly reduced externalizing problems only in one or two analyses for African-Americans, whereas removing children's allowance was significantly effective in one overall analysis. Parenting research needs to distinguish between more vs. less effective use of all disciplinary techniques across multiple situational and cultural contexts.

Validation of the Family Fear of Deportation Scale for youth.

Objective: This study reports on the psychometric properties of a new instrument to assess family fear of deportation in two versions (binary and polytomous response options). Background: The impact of fear of deportation extends beyond foreign-born youth to U.S. citizen children in families with unauthorized members, and negatively affects their academic achievement and their physical, mental, and behavioral health. A measure assessing levels of fear of deportation among youth is lacking. Methods: Participants were first- and second-generation Latino immigrant youth (N = 145 in Study 1 and N = 107 in Study 2). Item response theory (IRT), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), correlation analysis, and reliability tests were used to assess the scale's psychometric properties. Results: The results supported a five-item binary version and a six-item polytomous version of the scale. Both demonstrated excellent model fit, good reliability, and criterion validity. Conclusions: The six-item polytomous version is slightly more parsimonious than the five-item binary version scale, has better internal consistency, and captures a modestly wider range of the construct. The binary version may be preferable for immigrant youth who prefer straightforward response options. Implications: Researchers and practitioners can use either version of the Family Fear of Deportation Scale with confidence to assess deportation-related fear among Latino immigrant youth.

Trauma exposure and adolescent attitudes toward having a baby: An exploratory survey.

OBJECTIVES: To examine the association between childhood trauma exposure (i.e., extent of interpersonal trauma experienced in childhood) and attitudes toward teen parenthood. STUDY DESIGN: We used a cross-sectional sample of 416 urban middle and high school male and female students from Tulsa, OK recruited through a local public school district mailing list. Multinomial logistic regression analyses were used to examine odds of reporting having a baby would make life worse, better, or cause no change according to childhood trauma score. RESULTS: Approximately 8% of students and their guardians responded to the mailed survey invitation. Among the students, 67% reported having a baby would make their lives worse; 17% reported it would not change their lives much, and 16% reported having a baby would make their lives better. Each increase in trauma score was associated with a 9% increase in reporting an indifferent attitude (p < 0.001) and a 15% increase in reporting a positive attitude toward having a baby (p < 0.01). After controlling for a wide range of sociodemographic, attitudinal, and sexual history variables, childhood trauma remained associated with a positive attitude toward having a baby (p<.01), but not an indifferent attitude toward having a baby. CONCLUSIONS: Greater childhood trauma exposure is associated with indifferent and positive attitudes toward having a baby during adolescence. IMPLICATIONS: Screening for childhood trauma and utilizing interventions designed to reduce the harmful effects of trauma exposure in childhood may offer a more targeted approach to adolescent pregnancy prevention strategies.

Shared Language Erosion: Rethinking Immigrant Family Communication and Impacts on Youth Development.

In this paper we make the case for Shared Language Erosion as a potential explanation for the negative outcomes described in the immigrant paradox for second- and third- generation immigrants (e.g., declines in physical, mental, and behavioral health). While not negating the important role of cultural adaptation, we posit that parent-child communication difficulties due to a process we are calling Shared Language Erosion is driving the observed affects previously attributed to changes in cultural values and beliefs. Shared Language Erosion is the process during which adolescents improve their English skills while simultaneously losing or failing to develop their heritage language; at the same time their parents acquire English at a much slower rate. This lack of a common shared language makes it difficult for parents and their adolescent children to effectively communicate with each other, and leads to increased parent-child conflict, reduced parental competence, aggravated preexisting flaws in parent-child attachment, and increased adolescent vulnerability to deviant peer influences.

Do nonphysical punishments reduce antisocial behavior more than spanking? a comparison using the strongest previous causal evidence against spanking.

BACKGROUND: The strongest causal evidence that customary spanking increases antisocial behavior is based on prospective studies that control statistically for initial antisocial differences. None of those studies have investigated alternative disciplinary tactics that parents could use instead of spanking, however. Further, the small effects in those studies could be artifactual due to residual confounding, reflecting child effects on the frequency of all disciplinary tactics. This study re-analyzes the strongest causal evidence against customary spanking and uses these same methods to determine whether alternative disciplinary tactics are more effective in reducing antisocial behavior. METHODS: This study re-analyzed a study by Straus et al.1 on spanking and antisocial behavior using a sample of 785 children who were 6 to 9 years old in the 1988 cohort of the American National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. The comprehensiveness and reliability of the covariate measure of initial antisocial behavior were varied to test for residual confounding. All analyses were repeated for grounding, privilege removal, and sending children to their room, and for psychotherapy. To account for covarying use of disciplinary tactics, the analyses were redone first for the 73% who had reported using at least one discipline tactic and second by controlling for usage of other disciplinary tactics and psychotherapy. RESULTS: The apparently adverse effect of spanking on antisocial behavior was replicated using the original trichotomous covariate for initial antisocial behavior. A similar pattern of adverse effects was shown for grounding and psychotherapy and partially for the other two disciplinary tactics. All of these effects became non-significant after controlling for latent comprehensive measures of externalizing behavior problems. CONCLUSIONS: These results are consistent with residual confounding, a statistical artifact that makes all corrective actions by parents and psychologists appear to increase children's antisocial behavior due to child effects on parents. Improved research methods are needed to discriminate between effective vs. counterproductive implementations of disciplinary tactics. How and when disciplinary tactics are used may be more important than which type of tactic is used.

Modelling opportunity: An examination of quadratic effects of adolescent Venezuelan substance use.

INTRODUCTION AND AIMS: Numerous studies have found a linear relationship between an exposure opportunity and age of first drug use. This study further tests this relationship by exploring whether a quadratic exposure opportunity best fits the data on age of first use and whether gender moderates this relationship. That is, is there a peak age in which the transition to use occurs for male compared to female adolescents? DESIGN AND METHODS: A sample of 1716 adolescents from 14 public and private schools, representative of two school districts in Caracas, Venezuela, was examined using a zero-inflated Poisson modelling approach to test for quadratic effects. A series of models were tested for each set of substances (alcohol, tobacco and other drugs) to assess whether a quadratic model has better predictive ability than linear models and to test whether gender moderates the quadratic relationship. RESULTS: After controlling for common covariates, the quadratic models for alcohol indicated the peak age of transition from an exposure opportunity to use was 10-years of age in this Venezuelan sample. Gender did not moderate these models suggesting an important move toward gender equality in substance use. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS: Focused efforts on preventing exposure to alcohol use during these windows of rapid transition is likely to have the greatest impact on delaying age of onset, which will reduce the overall prevalence of alcohol related problems among adolescents.

The Effects of Requiring Parental Consent for Research on Adolescents' Risk Behaviors: A Meta-analysis.

PURPOSE: Requiring parental consent may result in sampling biases that confound scientific conclusions and stifle the representation of children most at risk for adverse outcomes. This study aims to investigate whether active parental consent, compared with passive parental consent, creates a bias in response rate, demographic makeup, and adverse outcomes in adolescent samples. METHODS: A meta-analysis was performed on peer-reviewed articles and unpublished dissertations from 1975 to 2016 in five computerized databases ERIC, PsycINFO, MEDLINE, PubMed and ProQuest. Quantitative studies were retained if they included the following keywords: active consent (or informed consent or parental consent), passive consent (or waiver of consent), risk behavior, adolescen*. RESULTS: Fifteen studies were identified with a total number of 104,074 children. Results showed (1) response rates were significantly lower for studies using active consent procedure than those using passive consent procedure (Z = 3.05, p = .002); (2) more females, younger participants, and less African-Americans were included in studies using active consent procedures than studies using passive procedures (Z = -2.73, p = .006; Z = -12.06, p < .00001; Z = 2.19, p = .03, respectively); (3) studies with passive consent procedures showed higher rates of self-reported substance use than studies using active consent procedures (Z = 3.07, p = .002). CONCLUSIONS: Requiring active parental consent can lead to a systematic bias in the sample where the population under study is misrepresented. Institutional review board committees should collaborate with researchers to find solutions that protect minors without silencing the voice of high-risk youth in the literature.

Many replications do not causal inferences make: the need for critical replications to test competing explanations of nonrandomized studies.

Although direct replications are ideal for randomized studies, areas of psychological science that lack randomized studies should incorporate Rosenbaum's (2001) distinction between trivial and nontrivial replications, relabeled herein as exact and critical replications. If exact replications merely repeat systematic biases, they cannot enhance cumulative progress in psychological science. In contrast, critical replications distinguish between competing explanations by using crucial tests to clarify the underlying causal influences. We illustrate this potential with examples from research on corrective actions by professionals (e.g., psychotherapy, Ritalin) and parents (e.g., spanking, homework assistance), where critical replications are needed to overcome the inherent selection bias due to corrective actions being triggered by children's symptoms. Purported causal effects must first prove to be replicable after plausible confounds such as selection bias are eliminated. Subsequent critical replications can then compare plausible alternative explanations of the average unbiased causal effect and of individual differences in those effects. We conclude that this type of systematic sequencing of critical replications has more potential for making the kinds of discriminations typical of cumulative progress in science than do exact replications alone, especially in areas where randomized studies are unavailable.

Do parent-child acculturation gaps affect early adolescent Latino alcohol use? A study of the probability and extent of use.

The literature has been mixed regarding how parent-child relationships are affected by the acculturation process and how this process relates to alcohol use among Latino youth. The mixed results may be due to, at least, two factors: First, staggered migration in which one or both parents arrive to the new country and then send for the children may lead to faster acculturation in parents than in children for some families. Second, acculturation may have different effects depending on which aspects of alcohol use are being examined. This study addresses the first factor by testing for a curvilinear trend in the acculturation-alcohol use relationship and the second by modeling past year alcohol use as a zero inflated negative binomial distribution. Additionally, this study examined the unique and mediation effects of parent-child acculturation discrepancies (gap), mother involvement in children's schooling, father involvement in children's schooling, and effective parenting on youth alcohol use during the last 12 months, measured as the probability of using and the extent of use. Direct paths from parent-child acculturation discrepancy to alcohol use, and mediated paths through mother involvement, father involvement, and effective parenting were also tested. Only father involvement fully mediated the path from parent-child acculturation discrepancies to the probability of alcohol use. None of the variables examined mediated the path from parent-child acculturation discrepancies to the extent of alcohol use. Effective parenting was unrelated to acculturation discrepancies; however, it maintained a significant direct effect on the probability of youth alcohol use and the extent of use after controlling for mother and father involvement. Implications for prevention strategies are discussed.