Measurement equivalence of the language-brokering scale for Chinese American adolescents and their parents.

Abstract

Language brokering occurs frequently in immigrant families. Using data from 279 Chinese American families with adolescents who function as language brokers for their parents, the current study developed a comprehensive scale to assess adolescents' and their parents' perceptions of language brokering. Both versions, parent and adolescent, showed stable factor structures. We also examined measurement equivalence, including factorial and construct-validity invariance, for each subscale across parent gender, adolescent gender, adolescent nativity, and translation frequency. In general, metric factorial invariance was observed for most subscales across the different groups; these subscales can thus be used in future studies examining the relations between language brokering and other variables. Further, two adolescent subscales (i.e., adolescent-focused burden, positive relations with parents) and three parent subscales (i.e., parent-focused burden, negative feelings, positive relations with child) demonstrated strong factorial invariance consistently across different groups, and can thus be used in future studies examining mean group differences in language-brokering experiences. In terms of construct-validity equivalence, most subscales were associated with parent-child conflict and adolescent depressive symptoms to a similar degree across parent gender, adolescent gender, and nativity. Implications of the current findings and recommendations for future use are discussed.