The Role of Social Support on Mental Health and Academic Outcomes Among Asian American Youth: Testing the Heterogeneous Associations By Nativity, Ethnicity, and Gender

Purpose: Asian Americans show a mixed pattern of development, i.e., less externalizing problem behaviors, better academic performance but higher rates of mental health problems (Choi & Rogers, 2007). Despite a seemingly positive racial stereotype such as “model minority,” they are thought to be “racially triangulated” (Lee, 1999), persistently regarded as a foreigner and face racial discrimination. Social support is known to alleviate the detrimental effects associated with racial minority status (Liebkind et al., 2004). Yet, less is known about whether and how different types and sources of support are associated with developmental outcomes, and how they vary by nativity, ethnicity, and gender. It is likely that Asian American youth with a certain characteristics (e.g., foreign born vs. U.S.-born or Korean Americans vs. Filipino Americans) may benefit more from a certain type of social support. Accordingly, this study aims to examine the associations between social support and depressive symptoms and academic outcomes among two groups of Asian American youth (Filipino and Korean Americans) and to investigate whether these associations vary by the identified characteristics.

Methods: Data came from the Midwest Longitudinal Study of Asian American Families (ML-SAAF) Project that survey-interviewed 410 Korean and 379 Filipino American youth, N = 789, from late 2014 to mid-2015. The average age was 14.76 (SD=1.91) for Korean and 15.28 (SD=1.89) for Filipino American youth. The outcome variables were depressive symptoms and GPA to assess academic performance. We included five social support constructs, (1) by sources, i.e., social support from school, church, and (2) by types, i.e., instrumental, emotional and general support. Example questions were “My teacher helps me when I need it,” “There is at least one teacher or other adult at school that I can talk to if I have a problem.” We used multivariate regression models to test the associations between the five social support constructs and two outcomes. The interactions of these associations were examined by each moderator—nativity (U.S.-born vs. foreign born), ethnicity (Korean vs. Filipino), and gender.

Results: All five social support constructs were significantly associated with less depressive symptoms. Only instrumental support was significantly associated with better grade. Interaction results show that nativity moderated the relationship between every social support construct and depressive symptoms and ethnicity moderated the relationship between every social support construct and academic outcome. Specifically, U.S.-born youth benefited more from social support in reducing depressive symptoms. Filipino youth benefited more from social support in increasing GPA. 

Conclusions and Implications: The findings provide empirical evidence of the role of social support on the healthy mental and academic outcomes among Asian American youth. We further show that U.S.-born and Filipino youth would benefit more from it. This finding is in particular significant because U.S.-born, compared to foreign born, have reported more problems and Filipino youth show poor outcomes among Asian Americans. Social work practice and interventions should be tailored to provide more social support to Asian American youth and especially to those who may be at a higher risk but would get more benefit from social support.