Facilitating the study of familism across racial/ethnic groups: Creation of the Short Attitudinal Familism Scale.

Abstract

As the research on familism values, or cultural values relating to support, interconnectedness, and obligations has blossomed, scholars are increasingly interested in the applicability and impact of familism values across diverse racial/ethnic youth. However, existing measures of familism tend to be long, posing potential practicality issues and have not been validated for use across youth from different racial/ethnic groups. Through a series of conceptual steps and exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, we developed the Short Attitudinal Familism Scale, a 6-item, shortened, unidimensional version of Lugo Steidel and Contreras's (2003) 18-item Attitudinal Familism Scale. This measure was created and validated in a sample of 671 Black, Latinx American, Asian American, and Multiracial youth (M age = 17.23, 73.6% female). Multigroup measurement invariance testing indicated that the Short Attitudinal Familism Scale was almost wholly noninvariant and may be used reliably across racial/ethnic groups. Finally, we established construct validity by demonstrating negative associations with depressive symptoms in all but Asian American youth and positive associations between familism and ethnic-racial identity (ERI) for all youth. In conducting these tests using regressions using observed mean scores and structural equation modeling (SEM) using latent variables, we demonstrated that using a mean score of this scale led to small and negligible amounts of attenuation in estimates and similar statistical conclusions compared to those derived from SEM. Our study adds to the field by introducing a practical, unidimensional measure of familism values that may be used across racial/ethnic groups.

Novel measures of family orientation and childhood self-regulation: A genetically informed twin study.

“…This suggests that family orientation could be an effective target for clinical interventions seeking to promote children’s self-regulation. Furthermore, consistent with our hypotheses and previous research (Christophe & Stein, 2022), associations with children’s self-regulation were similar across racial/ethnic groups. Although researchers posit that valuing and prioritizing the family is a universal, rather than specific, cultural practice (Hardway & Fuligni, 2006), these findings do not minimize the importance of familism for racial/ethnic minority groups.…”

“…Several attitudinal and behavioral measures of familism exist, with most childhood research relying on parent reports (see Stein et al, 2014). Familism is argued to be specific to Hispanic/Latino individuals (Grau et al, 2009) but has also been identified in other racial/ethnic groups (Christophe & Stein, 2022). We use the term familism when describing previous research and family orientation in our study given the racial/ethnic diversity of our sample.…”

Family values vs parental involvement in families with a chronically ill child

“…In the present study, the notion of familism ( family values) is understood as a central culture value related to family support, loyalty, strong, positive family bonds and the sense of obligation towards the family (Christophe et al, 2022). It has been assumed that familism includes five dimensions: respect, family support, religion, material success and achievements and individualism.…”

Not in Front of the Child: Illiberal Familism and the Hungarian Anti‐LGBTQ+ “Child Protective Law”

“…Familism (familismo) refers to the family as a central cultural value and most of the time case studies discuss immigrant social groups with Latinx or Asian cultural background (e.g., Choi et al, 2021;Hernández & Bámaca-Colbert, 2016). Most research highlights the positive effects of the familistic attitudes and behaviors of immigrant Latinx and Asian youth, such as stronger resilience to discrimination (for an overview, see Christophe & Stein, 2022). However, recent publications also draw attention to the limits of strong familist attitudes, especially its ambivalent or even negative relation to family members who identify with the LGBTQ+ community (Patrón, 2021).…”