Emotional problems in preadolescents in Norway: the role of gender, ethnic minority status, and home- and school-related hassles

Daniele E Alves,Henrik D Zachrisson,Espen Roysamb,Brit Oppedal

doi:10.1186/1753-2000-5-37

Abstract

Background"The gender gap" refers to a lifelong higher rate of emotional problems in girls, as compared to boys, that appears during adolescence. The gender gap is a well-replicated finding among older adolescents and is assumed to be a cross-cultural phenomenon. However, these cross-cultural studies have not investigated the gender gap in ethnic minorities but sampled ethnic majority adolescents in different countries. Some studies that investigated the gender gap across ethnic groups indirectly (by presenting emotional problem scores stratified by gender and ethnic group) indicate that the gender gap is less prominent or even absent among minorities. The aims of this study were to assess whether the gender gap is found in both majority and minority preadolescents, and to investigate whether a possible (gender and ethnic) group difference can be accounted for by differences in home or school hassles.MethodsParticipants were 902 preadolescent students (aged 10 to 12) from two cities in Norway. We collected self-report measures of emotional problems and home and school hassles. Using mediated moderation analysis we tested whether the interaction effect between gender and ethnic minority background on emotional problems was mediated by home or school hassles.ResultsThe gender gap in emotional problems was restricted to ethnic majority preadolescents. School hassles but not home hassles accounted in part for this effect.ConclusionsThe absence of the gender gap among minority as opposed to majority preadolescents may indicate that social circumstances may postpone or hamper the emergence and magnitude of the gender gap in ethnic minority preadolescents. In this study, school hassles partly accounted for the combined gender and ethnic group differences on emotional problems. This indicates that school hassles may play a role in the higher levels of emotional problems in preadolescent minority boys and consequently the absence of a gender gap found in our minority sample.

Highlights

Emotional problems include symptoms of depression, anxiety, and withdrawal and are characterized by intropunitive emotions such as sorrow, guilt, fear, and worry [1]
To the best of our knowledge, there is no study directly questioning the existence of the gender gap in ethnic minority samples; in other words, we found no study directly questioning whether the finding that girls have more emotional problems than boys, can be extended to ethnic minority populations
Emotional problems were associated with economic hardship, school hassles, and home hassles

Summary

Introduction

Emotional (or internalizing) problems include symptoms of depression, anxiety, and withdrawal and are characterized by intropunitive emotions such as sorrow, guilt, fear, and worry [1]. Emotional problems in preadolescents have serious concurrent consequences; they can, for instance, hamper academic success [2,3] and peer relations [4,5]. The presence of these problems at an early age may predict higher risk of mental and physical. One group that has captured the attention of researchers studying emotional problems is ethnic minorities. Findings in the field are inconsistent, and some studies find that minorities are more likely to have emotional problems than ethnic majorities, whereas others find the opposite [8]. Minority versus majority differences in emotional problems have been found to be different for girls and boys [12]

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