A Meta-Analysis: Racial Microaggressions and Well-Being of Asian Americans

Background and Purpose: Racial microaggressions continue to be a serious problem in the United States. While racial microaggressions have been a long standing issue for all Asian Americans, Covid significantly amplified both overt and microaggression-based discrimination because of the links between the origins of the viral spread and China (Lee & Waters, 2021). Despite this longstanding history of microaggressions against Asian Americans, research related to this population has lagged compared to other groups. However, recently research in this area has been expanding, warranting a synthesis of existing literature to better frame understandings of the current state of knowledge and to provide a foundation for future research. The purpose of this study was to critically review studies that examined the effects of racial microaggressions on health outcomes and meta-analytically test the following hypothesis: Experiences of racialized microaggressions will be associated with negative health outcomes.

Methods: The meta-analytic hypothesis was tested using a sample-weighted, random effects model with Comprehensive Meta-Analysis software ([version 4]; Borenstein et al., 2013). Assuming significant heterogeneity across primary studies, an exploratory moderator analysis was undertaken to assess if there was a significant difference in effects between studies that included only Asian participants and those that included Asian participants and others. If multiple studies reported on the same sample but different outcomes or if one study reported on multiple outcomes, effects across outcomes were pooled. Two studies were excluded from the meta-analysis as they reported results from the same samples and on similar outcomes. The correlation coefficient (r) was the central meta-analytic statistic (Cohen, 1988). The r_pooled within a 95% confidence interval (CI) was calculated from regression statistics.

Results: Twenty studies were included in the meta-analysis. The meta-analytic hypothesis was supported. There was a statistically significant relationship between experiencing racialized microaggressions and negative health outcomes (r_pooled = 0.231 [95% CI 0.16, 0.30]). The moderator analysis was not significant. However, this trend did approach statistical significance (p = .15) and studies that reported on Asian populations only showed a larger effect (n = 8; r_pooled = 0.42) than those that included other racial/ethnic groups (n = 10; r_pooled = 0.18).

Conclusions and Implications: This study highlights gaps in the literature and future research implications related to racial microaggressions and well-being among Asian Americans. Through the scoping review, only eleven studies that presented effect sizes specifically for Asian populations were uncovered. Further, despite not reaching statistical significance, the moderator analysis revealed that racialized microaggressions had a larger negative effect across studies that included only Asian (sub-)samples than studies that included Asians and other racialized/ethic groups. Considering this finding and the continued growth of the Asian American population, this is an area of research that requires greater attention. Future research should focus on enhancing diversity within samples and disaggregating racialized/ethnic groups in analyses. Further, future work should focus on different ethnic subgroups of Asian Americans.