Correlations among Socioeconomic and Family Factors and Academic, Behavioral, and Emotional Difficulties in Filipino Adolescents in Hawai'i

Background: Because of socioeconomic and acculturative challenges faced by immigrant families, Filipino adolescents in Hawai'i may be at risk for academic, behavioral and emotional difficulties. Aim: To determine, among Filipino adolescents in Hawai'i, whether measures of economic hardship and lower socioeconomic status (SES) correlate positively with poor school performance, aggressive behavior, substance use, anxiety, and depression; and whether family support and cultural identification correlate negatively with these difficulties. Methods: 216 Filipino adolescents from four public high schools in Hawai'i (1993–1994) were given surveys that assessed basic demographic information, measures of family support and other social variables, and measures of school performance, depression, anxiety, aggression and substance use. Results: In the total sample, low SES seemed to correlate with poor school performance and behavioral and emotional difficulties. In both the total sample and the sub-sample of adolescents with lower SES, family support was a universally strong protective factor. Learning genealogy was positively correlated with school performance, and speaking a language other than English was inversely correlated with substance use (in the whole sample) and depression (in the lower SES sub-sample). Conclusions: For Filipino adolescents (in both the whole and lower-SES samples), family support was an important protective factor against academic, behavioral and emotional difficulties. The role of cultural identification as a risk or protective factor among Filipino adolescents deserves further investigation.