The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has fueled xenophobia against Chinese Americans. We examined the rates of 6 types of COVID-19 racism and racial discrimination experienced by Chinese ...American parents and youth and the associations with their mental health.
We recruited a population-based sample of Chinese American families to participate in this self-reported survey study conducted from March 14, 2020, to May 31, 2020. Eligible parent participants identified as ethnically/racially Chinese, lived in the United States, and had a 4- to 18-year-old child; their eligible children were 10 to 18 years old.
The sample included 543 Chinese American parents (mean SD age, 43.44 6.47 years; 425 mothers 78.3%), and their children (
= 230; mean SD age, 13.83 2.53 years; 111 girls 48.3%). Nearly half of parents and youth reported being directly targeted by COVID-19 racial discrimination online (parents: 172 31.7%; youth: 105 45.7%) and/or in person (parents: 276 50.9%; youth: 115 50.2%). A total of 417 (76.8%) parents and 176 (76.5%) youth reported at least 1 incident of COVID-19 vicarious racial discrimination online and/or in person (parents: 481 88.5%; youth: 211 91.9%). A total of 267 (49.1%) parents and 164 (71.1%) youth perceived health-related Sinophobia in America, and 274 (50.4%) parents and 129 (56.0%) youth perceived media-perpetuated Sinophobia. Higher levels of parent- and youth-perceived racism and racial discrimination were associated with their poorer mental health.
Health care professionals must attend to the racism-related experiences and mental health needs of Chinese Americans parents and their children throughout the COVID-19 pandemic via education and making appropriate mental health referrals.
Applications of latent transition analysis (LTA) have emerged since the early 1990s, with numerous scientific findings being published in many areas, including social and behavioral sciences, ...education, and public health. Although LTA is effective as a statistical analytic tool for a person-centered model using longitudinal data, model building in LTA has often been subjective and confusing for applied researchers. To fill this gap in the literature, we review the components of LTA, recommend a framework of fitting LTA, and summarize what acceptable model evaluation tools should be used in practice. The proposed framework of fitting LTA consists of six steps depicted in Figure 1 from step 0 (exploring data) to step 5 (fitting distal variables). We also illustrate the framework of fitting LTA with data on concerns about school bullying from a sample of 1,180 students ranging from 5th to 9th grade (mean age = 12.2 years, SD = 1.29 years at Time 1) over three semesters. We identified four groups of students with distinct patterns of bullying concerns, and found that their concerns about bullying decreased and narrowed to specific concerns about rumors, gossip, and social exclusion over time. The data and command (syntax) files needed for reproducing the results using SAS PROC LCA and PROC LTA (Version 1.3.2) (2015) and Mplus 7.4 (Muthén and Muthén, 1998-2015) are provided as online supplementary materials.
Research has shown a negative association between positive school climate and bullying behavior. This article reviews research on school climate and bullying behavior and proposes that an unhealthy ...and unsupportive school climate (e.g., negative relationship between teachers and students, positive attitudes towards bullying) provides a social context that allows bullying behavior to occur. We provide information on how to evaluate the school climate and intervene to promote a more positive school climate and to reduce bullying behavior. Although there has been an increased interest among school personnel, parents, and students to reduce bullying behavior, the issue of how to assess the myriad of factors that may cause and maintain bullying behaviors, and to select evidence-based prevention and intervention programs, remains a challenge for many educators. This article seeks to address these two issues by highlighting the importance of school climate in bullying prevention and reviewing some school climate evaluations and intervention programs.
Popularity is of great developmental significance to early adolescents for its implications on behavioral and adjustment outcomes. Although extensive research on popularity has been conducted in ...Western cultures, little is known about Chinese adolescents’ indigenous understanding of popularity. The current study examined Chinese early adolescents’ understanding of popularity using focus group interviews to explore the characteristics of popularity and unpopularity, as well as popularity determinants for boys and girls. We conducted interviews on six focus groups comprising 37 Chinese fifth and sixth graders (18 boys, 19 girls). Transcriptions were coded and analyzed through developing coding schemes that included emerged codes and categories. The results showed both cross-cultural similarities and culturally specific findings in adolescents’ perceptions of popularity characteristics and determinants. Specifically, sociability, academic performance, and prosocial behaviors served as major characteristics of popularity, whereas aggressive and disruptive behaviors were regarded as typical attributes of unpopularity. More importantly, culturally unique aspects of popularity characteristics were reported by Chinese adolescents, such as a strong sense of collective honor. When responding what would make a peer popular, Chinese early adolescents reported various behavioral, social, and cultural factors. Findings of this study underscore the importance of examining perceptions of popularity in consideration of the cultural context.
This study investigated the influence of student-teacher relationships and attitudes toward bullying on middle school students' bullying behaviors. Gender and grade differences were also examined. ...Data were collected from 435 middle school students. Results indicated that students' attitudes toward bullying mediated the relationship between student-teacher relationships and physical and verbal/relational bullying. There was a significant group difference on student-teacher relationships and attitudes toward bullying between bully, bully-victim, victim, and bystander groups and students not involved in bullying. In addition, sixth graders reported significantly more positive student-teacher relationships than seventh and eighth graders. Implications for the role of both cognitive and behavioral bullying intervention and prevention efforts are discussed.
Objective: Research suggests that low levels of school belonging and high levels of victimisation predict negative emotions, including loneliness. However, few studies have examined this relation ...among Chinese elementary school students. The protective role of covitality against victimisation and loneliness also remains unexplored. This study examines the relations between bullying victimisation, school belonging, covitality, and loneliness over 6 months, and whether covitality moderates the relations between victimisation and loneliness.
Method: Eight hundred students from five elementary schools in China completed self-report surveys at two time points (6 months apart).
Results: Bullying victimisation, school belonging, and covitality predicted loneliness 6 months later. Students who experienced more bullying victimisation, lower levels of school belonging, and lower covitality reported more loneliness 6 months later. Covitality buffered the relation between verbal victimisation at Time 1 (T1) and loneliness at T1 but did not buffer the relation between victimisation T1 and loneliness at Time 2 (T2).
Conclusions: Schools should prevent bullying, foster school belonging, and promote covitality (positive psychological traits) to reduce Chinese youths' feelings of loneliness.
KEY POINTS
What is already known about this topic:
(1) Victimisation is a risk factor for loneliness for children in the United States.
(2) School belonging is a protective factor for loneliness for children in United States.
(3) Covitality is a protective factor for youth.
What this topic adds:
(1) Victimisation is a risk factor for loneliness for children in China.
(2) School belonging and covitality are protective factors against loneliness for children in China.
(3) Covitality moderates the relation between verbal victimisation and loneliness using cross-sectional data only.
In addition to the unprecedented challenges and stressors that university students faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, Asian American students experienced specific hardships due to ...COVID-19-associated xenophobic attitudes, harassment, and assault against people of Asian complexions. This qualitative study aimed to explore the ways in which Asian American university students' experiences during the pandemic changed their views of their identities as Asian Americans by analyzing in-depth interviews of four case study participants. Secondary analysis of two waves of interviews, which were conducted during the initial outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and during a six-month follow-up, and primary analysis of a newly conducted third wave one year after the initial outbreak yielded 12 themes that captured the essence of the Asian American university students' experience and redefining of their identity during the pandemic. The four participants identified these themes across four categories: Experiences and Events during the Pandemic; Categorization of Asians in America; Confronting Asian Discrimination; and Renewed Sense of Identity. The longitudinal findings revealed direct experiences and perspectives regarding the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on Asian communities, as well as the impact of the various social and political events during this time period, such as the Black Lives Matter Movement (2020) and the 2020 US presidential election. The implications, limitations, and future directions are discussed.
The Social Emotional Health Survey-Primary (SEHS-P) was originally developed to assess U.S. elementary students' positive psychological traits: gratitude, zest, optimism, and persistence, and the ...higher-order latent construct of covitality. The present study evaluated the validity of a Chinese version of SEHS-P with a sample of 653 Chinese children (M
age
= 11.4, SD = 1.0). Confirmatory factor, measurement invariance, and latent means analyses were conducted to evaluate construct validity. Results indicated that the factor structure found for the original U.S. sample was replicated (first-order factors: optimism, gratitude, persistence, zest; second-order factor: covitality). The covitality latent trait was associated with fewer depressive symptoms, higher prosocial behaviors, less victimization and perpetration, and predicted better academic achievement six months later. Implications for using SEHS-P as a social emotional health screening tool for use in Chinese schools are discussed. Future studies should continue to examine SEHS-P in other samples in China as well as in other culture contexts.
Bullying is prevalent in many schools worldwide. Providing bullying prevention training to preservice teachers can make a significant difference in preventing school bullying. There is a lack of ...training in bullying prevention for preservice teachers in China, and the effectiveness of such training for bullying prevention has not yet been established. The present study examined the effectiveness of bullying prevention training on antibullying self‐efficacy and incorrect beliefs about bullying among Chinese preservice teachers. A total of 139 preservice teachers (Mage = 20.76 years, SD = 0.80 years, ranging from 19 to 23 years; 90.6% women) were randomly assigned to the bullying prevention training (n = 73) or the control group (n = 66). Preservice teachers completed pre‐ and posttraining surveys. The participants in the treatment group completed a 5‐week bullying prevention training program (1.5 h per week). Measures of antibullying self‐efficacy and incorrect beliefs about bullying were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the bullying prevention training. Results indicated that the training increased preservice teachers' antibullying self‐efficacy but did not decrease their incorrect beliefs about bullying. Practical implications, limitations, and future directions of these findings are discussed.
Practitioner Points
Bullying prevention training resulted in an increase of preservice teachers' antibullying self‐efficacy.
The training did not decrease preservice teachers' incorrect beliefs about bullying.
Incorporating bullying prevention training into the preservice teacher education curriculum is essential.
Using a cross-sectional survey design, we examined whether social support was a stress buffer against direct online and vicarious general racial discrimination for 218 Asian/Asian American college ...students in the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, and whether the buffering effect depended on external locus of control (external LOC). An alarming percentage of Asian/Asian American students reported direct online (58.7%) and vicarious racial discrimination (88.1%). Moderated moderation with bootstrap analysis revealed detrimental effects of direct online and vicarious racial discrimination on mental health, and protective effects of social support and low external LOC. Importantly, we found several significant Racial discrimination × Social support × External LOC interaction effects. High levels of social support were only consistently found to be a significant buffer against direct online racial discrimination for those with moderate-to-high external LOC. Results indicated that the buffering effect of social support depended on external LOC and the type of racial discrimination during the current pandemic.
What is the public significance of this article?
Asian/Asian American college students with limited social support and high external LOC were especially vulnerable to racism-related psychological symptoms during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. High levels of social support were a buffer against direct online racial discrimination for those with high external LOC. Social support may be less effective as a stress buffer for vicarious racial discrimination. It is important to promote coping strategies that are consistent with one's values and beliefs and responsive to the nature of the racial stressors.
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