1 / 39

Acculturation and the Help-Seeking Behaviour of Asian-Canadian Gamblers

This study explores the impact of acculturation on the attitudes towards seeking professional and informal help among Asian-Canadian gamblers. The research aims to understand the cultural variables that contribute to underutilization of treatment services in this population.

johndbaker
Download Presentation

Acculturation and the Help-Seeking Behaviour of Asian-Canadian Gamblers

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. Acculturation and the Help-Seeking Behaviour of Asian-Canadian Gamblers David Liang August 13th, 2007

  2. Rationale for Study • Rise of legalized gambling • Underutilization of gambling treatment services • Asian Canadians – cultural susceptibility to pathological gambling • Cultural variables to underutilization of treatment services • Bidirectional measure of acculturation • Measurement of informal help

  3. Acculturation • Two perspectives to the construct • Unidirectional (assimilation model) Low Acculturated High Acculturated (Low dominant, high heritage) (High dominant, low heritage) • Bidirectional (integration model) Low dominant High dominant Low heritage High heritage

  4. The Current Study • Bidirectional measure of acculturation • Measures of attitudes towards seeking professional psychological help, as well as attitudes towards seeking informal sources of help • Measure of gambling severity

  5. Research questions • How does bidirectional acculturation influence attitudes toward seeking professional help for gambling problems? • How does bidirectional acculturation influence attitudes toward seeking informal sources of help for gambling problems?

  6. Methodology

  7. Participants • 170 Asian-Canadian adults • Well-educated (average 15.8 years of education, 43% had over 4 years of post-secondary education) • Mostly middle-upper class • Fluent in English • 88% Canadian Citizens • 71% Chinese, 8% Korean, 7% Vietnamese, 7 other ethnicities at 3% or less • 57% female, 43% male • 82% with no previous therapy experience • On the CPGI • 35% no risk, 33% low risk, 28% moderate risk, 4% high risk

  8. Inclusion criteria • Inclusion criteria: • East Asian or Southeast Asian descent • Recruitment posters and online questionnaire clearly specified that participants must have engaged in gambling behaviour in the past 12 months

  9. Recruitment • Internet recruitment (snowballing method) - 166 participants • Psychology participant pool - 4 participants

  10. Measures • Demographics measure • Vancouver Index of Acculturation (VIA; Ryder, Alden, & Paulhus, 2000) • Attitudes Toward Seeking Professional Psychological Help Scale for Problem Gambling (ATSPPH-PG; Fischer & Farina, 1995; Hart & Frisch, 2006) • Attitudes Toward Seeking Informal Help Scale for Problem Gambling (ATSIH) • Canadian Problem Gambling Index (CPGI; Ferris & Wynne, 2001)

  11. Hypotheses • Hypothesis 1a: Acculturation to the Canadian culture (VIA mainstream scores) positively predicts help-seeking attitudes towards professional psychological services (ATSPPH-PG scores) (above and beyond demographic variables and gambling severity) • Hypothesis 1b: Acculturation to the mainstream Canadian culture (VIA mainstream scores) negatively predicts help-seeking attitudes towards informal help (ATSIH-PG scores) • Hypothesis 2a: Acculturation to the heritage Asian culture (VIA heritage scores) negatively predicts help-seeking attitudes towards professional psychological services (ATSPPH-PG scores) • Hypothesis 2b: Acculturation to the heritage Asian culture (VIA heritage scores) positively predicts help-seeking attitudes towards informal help (ATSIH-PG scores)

  12. Results

  13. Correlational analyses • Pearson product moment correlations • Between outcome variables (ATSPPH-PG and ATSIH-PG) and key predictor variables • Between outcome variables and demographic variables

  14. Correlation Table Key Variables **p < .01, *p < .05

  15. Correlations Between Demographic and Outcome Variables **p < .01, *p < .05

  16. Hierarchical Regression Procedure • Significant demographic variables entered in first step • CPGI scores (gambling severity) entered in second step • VIA-M and VIA-H (Canadian and Asian acculturation) entered in final step • Outcome variables • Regression 1: ATSPPH-PG (professional help-seeking attitudes) • Regression 2: ATSIH-PG (informal help-seeking attitudes)

  17. Hierarchical Regression – ATSPPH-PG ***p < .001, **p < .01, *p < .05

  18. Hypothesis 1a/1b- Hierarchical MRA – ATSPPH-PG

  19. Hierarchical Regression – ATSIH-PG **p < .01, *p < .05

  20. Hypothesis 2a/2b- Hierarchical MRA – ATSIH-PG

  21. Discussion

  22. Hypothesis 1a/1b – Canadian Acculturation Hypothesis 1a: Acculturation to the Canadian culture (VIA mainstream scores) positively predicts help seeking attitudes towards professional psychological services (ATSPPH-PG scores) (above and beyond demographic variables and gambling severity) Hypothesis 1b: Acculturation to the mainstream Canadian culture (VIA mainstream scores) negatively predicts help seeking attitudes towards informal help (ATSIH-PG scores) (above and beyond demographic variables and gambling severity) • VIA-M not a significant predictor of ATSPPH-PG or ATSIH-PG – hypothesis 1a/1b NOT supported • VIA-M was significantly correlated with both ATSPPH-PG and ATSIH-PG

  23. Interpretation of findings – Hypothesis 1 • Findings are inconsistent with previous research on acculturation and professional help-seeking • No research on attitudes toward seeking help from informal sources • Lack of variability in acculturation • Significant shared variance between Canadian acculturation and other culture-related variables in regression

  24. Shared Variance Between Cultural Predictors of ATSPPH-PG ATSPPH-PG .186* .202** Mainstream Acculturation English Proficiency .427**

  25. Shared Variance Between Cultural Predictors of ATSIH-PG ATSIH-PG .162* .184* .214** Mainstream Acculturation Generation Status .375** .427** .390*** English Proficiency

  26. Hypothesis 2a/2b –Heritage (Asian) Acculturation Hypothesis 2a: Acculturation to the heritage Asian culture (VIA heritage scores) negatively predicts help seeking attitudes towards professional psychological services (ATSPPH-PG scores) Hypothesis 2b: Acculturation to the heritage Asian culture (VIA heritage scores) positively predicts help seeking attitudes towards informal help (ATSIH-PG scores) • VIA-H not a significant predictor of ATSPPH-PG or ATSIH-PG scores – Hypothesis 2a and 2b NOT supported • VIA-H not correlated with attitudes toward help-seeking

  27. Interpretation of Findings: Hypothesis 2 • Inconsistent with previous research, however, heritage acculturation is relatively understudied • Identification to Asian culture may not be significant factor influencing attitudes toward seeking help for gambling problems • Asian conceptualization of mental illness may differ from Westerners, but they may not differ in their conceptualization of the factors that motivate help-seeking for problem gambling • Asian cultural identification may not be as important as Canadian culture for present sample

  28. Gambling Severity and Attitudes Toward Help-Seeking • Gambling severity was strongest predictor for attitudes toward professional and informal help for problem gambling • Negative relationship – contrary to previous research

  29. Gambling Severity and Attitudes Toward Help-Seeking CPGI SCORE

  30. Possible explanations • Prochaska and DiClemente’s transtheoretical model • Individual progresses through 4 linear stages of increasing readiness to change a problematic behaviour • Early stages: Individual may actively deny problem exists, may feel benefits of continuing gambling behaviour outweighs cost of seeking help, not motivated to behavioural change • Later stages: Committed to behavioural change, takes direct action • Because present sample is from general community, vast majority of present sample has not sought help for their gambling problem  early stages of change • Denial of problem and defense towards treatment may explain negative relationship between gambling severity and attitudes toward help-seeking • Transtheoretical model predicts that individuals in later stages of change would have more positive attitudes toward help-seeking  needs to be validated by future research with gamblers in treatment programs

  31. Possible explanations • Cultural characteristics of Asians • May utilize coping strategy known as avoidance coping (Sheu & Sedlacek, 2004) • Differentiation between gambling severity and adverse consequences from problem gambling • Freyer et al. (2006) found adverse consequences due to alcohol abuse to be significant positive predictor of attitudes toward seeking help for alcohol dependence, while alcoholism severity was not a predictor

  32. English fluency and Attitudes Toward Help-Seeking English Fluency

  33. English Fluency: Interpretation • Current findings consistent with previous research • English fluency not a predictor for ATSIH-PG because in informal support network  similar language, similar ethno-cultural background

  34. Gender • Predictor of ATSPPH-PG • Women had more positive attitudes toward professional help than men • Consistent with previous research (Addis & Mahalik, 2003) • May be problematic for PG because PG predominantly affects men (NESARC, 2002) • Reluctance by men to seek professional help may be due to traditional masculine gender role • However, gender not a predictor of ATSIH-PG • Men may feel more comfortable discussing vulnerabilities with social support network rather than a professional, and may also feel less obliged to uphold traditional gender role

  35. Gender and Attitudes Toward Help-Seeking

  36. Limitations • Characteristics of the sample • General population • Gambling severity • English proficiency • Acculturation • Snowballing recruitment method • Use of Web-based questionnaires

  37. Clinical Implications • Insight to why professional treatment for gambling is so underutilized • Incorporation of transtheoretical model into treatment protocols • Gender

  38. Future Directions • Inclusion of alternate cultural variables into the help-seeking model • Utilization of subscales of ATSPPH-PG and ATSIH-PG • Incorporation of transtheoretical theory into help-seeking model • Development of adverse consequences of gambling scale

  39. Conclusion • Several findings are consistent with previous research, while other findings are not • The unexpected results indicate that influence of cultural variables and gambling severity on help-seeking attitudes are still not well-understood • Findings contributed some answers to the research literature, but also valuable questions to be addressed in future investigations

More Related