Abstract
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.
Highlights
Introduction to Statistical Mediation AnalysisNew York, NY: Lawrence Erlbaum; 2008.72
A linear increase in acculturation gap was significantly associated with the probability of using but not the extent of use for alcohol
Parent–child acculturation discrepancy and alcohol use After adding the mediators to the model, the linear gap term no longer directly increased the probability of use significantly, and the quadratic gap term remained a significant predictor of the extent of alcohol use
Summary
Sampling procedures Participants were seventh grade students from twelve schools in an urban school district in the Midwestern United States. Indirect effects of acculturation (i.e., linear and quadratic terms) on the likelihood of use and on the extent of use of alcohol were tested for significance using MacKinnon’s asymmetric distribution of products test [71] This procedure was chosen because it can test more than one mediating sequence at a time, and the direct relationship does not have to be statistically significant for mediation to exist. The asymmetric distribution of products test constructs a confidence interval around the product of the two unstandardized path coefficients that make up mediated relationship (i.e., an outcome regressed on an exogenous variable X through a mediator). We modeled direct paths of acculturation discrepancy and gender on the probability of having used and the extent of use among users for past 12-month alcohol use without mediators; and second, we added the mediated paths to the models (see Table 2 for path coefficients with confidence intervals and corresponding Wald tests)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
