Abstract
The present study examined 195 Latino college students' experience of acculturative stress and social/emotional bonding in the family and school contexts, and these variables' association with symptoms of depression and anxiety. Few studies have distinguished between different contextual sources of acculturative stress, or compared which source more strongly predicts mental health problems. The present study sought to make these comparisons by examining how Latino students' assimilation level might affect whether family or school-based factors more strongly predicted psychological symptoms. This study also compared 1) acculturative stress and 2) the presence of conflict with others about acculturation-related issues as a source of this stress in terms of which more strongly predicted psychological symptoms. Pearson correlations indicated that both family and school-based acculturative stress were positively correlated with depressive and anxiety symptoms, and that both family and school bonding were negatively correlated with these symptoms. Multiple regressions indicated that in both the family and school contexts, the experience of acculturative stress more strongly predicted symptoms of depression and anxiety than the presence of conflict as a source of this stress. Finally, Latino students' assimilation level generally did not affect whether family or school-based factors more strongly predicted their psychological symptoms; in most cases, school-based factors more strongly predicted symptoms regardless of students' assimilation level. The only exception to this finding was that for Latino students with a low assimilation level, family-based acculturative stress more strongly predicted anxiety symptoms than school-based acculturative stress.