Culture and Family Process: Measures of Familism for Filipino and Korean American Parents

• Author: Yoonsun Choi,Tae Yeun Kim,Samuel Noh,David Takeuchi,Jeanette Lee
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12322
• Published date: 01 December 2018
• Date: 01 December 2018

Culture and Family Process: Measures of Familism

for Filipino and Korean American Parents

YOONSUN CHOI*

TAE YEUN KIM

†

SAMUEL NOH

‡

JEANETTE LEE*

DAVID TAKEUCHI

§

This study tests the psychometric properties of multiple survey items and scales that are

either underused or newly developed to assess familism among Asian Americans. Using

data collected from 150 Filipino and 188 Korean American parents (mostly mothers) in the

Midwest region in 2013, the measures were examined for validity and reliability for each

group and, when appropriate, for cross-cultural equivalence across the groups. Se veral

scales and their items showed high quality psychometric properties and are ready for use

to more accurately assess family process of each target group and to conduct comparative

analyses. The findings also show that, contrary to the expectation, Filipino American fami-

lies express more traditional aspects of familism than do Korean American families, and

are more likely to reinforce traditional familism beliefs and behaviors among their chil-

dren. This study reinforces a need for more empirical- and subgroup-specific research

effort.

Keywords: Filipino American Parents; Korean American Parents; Cul ture; Immigration;

Familism

Fam Proc 57:1029–1048, 2018

INTRODUCTION

Familism, characterized by an emphasis on collective needs, interdependency, and con-

formity, along with a deeply ingrained sense of obligation and orientation to the fam-

ily, has received increasing scholarly attention as it has been shown to serve as a

protective factor for certain subpopulations of youth (see, e.g., Corona, Campos, & Chen,

2017; German, Gonzales, & Dumka, 2009). While familism is recognized as a hallmark of

Hispanic culture (see, e.g., Schaefer, 2008, Schwartz, 2007; Killoren et al., 2015), with sev-

eral scales validated for various Latino populations (Lugo-Steidel & Contreras, 2003),

familism’s central role among other collectivist ethnic groups has also been noted

(Schwartz, 2007). Recently, the accelerated growth of the Asian American population

*School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL.

†

Department of Applied Social Sciences, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.

‡

Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.

§

School of Social Work, Boston College, Boston, MA.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Yoonsun Choi, The School of Social

Service Administration, The University of Chicago, 969 East 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637. E-mail:

yoonsun@uchicago.edu.

This study was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human

Development (NICHD, R01 HD073200, PI: Yoonsun Choi).

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Family Process, Vol. 57, No. 4, 2018 ©2017 Family Process Institute

doi: 10.1111/famp.12322

(Pew Research Center, 2013) has merited a dedicated understanding of Asian American

family processes in general and familism in particular.

Familism is one of the most distinctive characteristics of Asian culture and is widely

found across Asian cultures regardless of religion, traditional custom, and dominant phi-

losophy. Emerging research suggests that familism may be determinative of developm en-

tal outcomes among Asian American youth. Asian American high school youth, in the

aggregate, report better grades and lower rates of crimes, substance use, and risky sexual

behaviors than youth of other racial-ethnic groups (Choi & Lahey, 2006; Grunbaum,

Lowry, Kann, & Pateman, 2000; Jang, 2002). However, these external measures of adjust-

ment belie the disproportionate rate of internalizing problems experienced by Asian Amer-

ican youth. Depression and suicide rates are significantly higher among Asian American

youth than among youth of other backgrounds (Lipsicas & M€

akinen, 2010; Okazaki, 1997;

Shibusawa, 2008). Several studies suggest that these disparate outcomes may be mediated

in part by familism, among other family processes (Choi, 2008; Juang & Nguyen, 2009).

Though many of these studies refer to Asian Americans in the aggregate, significant stud-

ies point to differences in both family processes as well as outcomes among Asian Ameri-

can subgroups. The important role of familism in adolescent outcomes compels a nuanced

understanding of Asian American familism that differentiates among Asian American

subgroups.

The study of familism among Asian American families is complicated by a twofold

methodological challenge. There are over 20 Asian American subgroups with distinct his-

tories, languages, religious affiliations, and other markers of culture, and, the paucity of

culture-specific constructs leaves critical aspects of familism unmeasured; familism mea-

sures developed with other populations are not likely to capture attitudes and behaviors

unique to Asian Americans in the aggregate, as well as to particular subgroups of Asian

Americans. Dynamic pathways of enculturation and acculturation are interwoven into

Asian American family processes in subgroup-specific ways that may not be captured by

conventional measures (Choi, Kim, Pekelnicky, & Kim, 2013). Second, the application of

familism measures to Asian American families without explicit verifications of validity to

particular subgroups of Asian Americans obscures the possibility that these measures are

not equivalent across groups (for exceptions, see Choi & Harachi, 2002; Crockett, Veed, &

Russell, 2010; Wu & Chao, 2011).

Researchers have validated several related ethno-specific components of Asian Ameri-

can family processes such as guan (Chao, 1994) and qin (Wu & Chao, 2005) among Chi-

nese American families, and ga-jung-kyo-yuk among Korean American families (Choi

et al., 2013) that reflect a set of essential family centric concepts, but these mostly focus

on parenting behaviors while neglecting core familism values that may be most salient to

Asian American families. Family obligation, a predominant aspect of familism, has been

studied extensively (e.g., Fuligni, 2007) and several scales have been developed to capture

Asian family values such as Asian Cultural Values (Kim, Atkinson, & Yang, 1999). The

findings on these constructs have been inconsistent, in part because they were developed

globally for Asians as an aggregate group. It is plausible that familism is a universal con-

cept, but specificity regarding its practice and centrality among culturally distinct Asian

American subgroups is necessary both for theoretically robust grounding as well as for

praxis.

This study addresses this methodological challenge by exploring the validity, reliab ility,

and cross-cultural equivalence of existing and new measures of familism to Filipino and

Korean American parents. Content and construct validity of eight scales of familism incor-

porating existing and new items were tested separately for both groups. Measures exhibit-

ing comparable factor structures across groups were tested for higher levels of

measurement invariance. That is, scales exhibiting configural invariance were further

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