Attitude-Behavior Discrepancy in Familism and Its Relation to Symptoms of Depression Among Latinos

This research examines the discrepancy between attitudinal and behavioral familism and its relation to depressive symptoms. The overarching hypothesis was that discrepancy between family values and the actual experience of those values leads to depressive symptoms. Previous research has primarily focused on attitudinal familism and not whether those values are actually experienced by the individual. Therefore, the purpose of this study was twofold. First, we developed a new Attitudinal and Behavioral Familism Questionnaire (ABFQ), and second, we tested the familism discrepancy hypothesis. A total of 169 Latino adults (63.3% female; mean age = 20.99 years) completed a pool of attitudinal and behavioral familism items, along with measures of perceived family support. family cohesion, family conflict, acculturation, enculturation, social desirability, and depression. Test-retest reliability of the ABFQ was established with a subsample of 48 participants who completed the measures twice, 2 weeks apart. Confirmatory factor analyses were used to identify the items that constitute the ABFQ and demonstrated that the Attitudinal and Behavioral Scales were separate factors. The ABFQ demonstrated good psychometric properties in terms of adequate internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and convergent and divergent validity. Polynomial regression and response surface analyses demonstrated that discrepancy between attitudinal and behavioral familism scores predicted symptoms of depression. Specifically, depressive symptoms appeared to increase as the discrepancy between attitudinal and behavioral familism increased in either direction. This study contributes to the understanding of the link between familism and depression among Latinos. Future directions for research and clinical practice are described.