Emotional problems in preadolescents in Norway: the role of gender, ethnic minority status, and home- and school-related hassles

Abstract

Background"The gender gap" refers to a lifelong higher rate of emotional problems in girls, as compared to boys, that appears during adolescence. The gender gap is a well-replicated finding among older adolescents and is assumed to be a cross-cultural phenomenon. However, these cross-cultural studies have not investigated the gender gap in ethnic minorities but sampled ethnic majority adolescents in different countries. Some studies that investigated the gender gap across ethnic groups indirectly (by presenting emotional problem scores stratified by gender and ethnic group) indicate that the gender gap is less prominent or even absent among minorities. The aims of this study were to assess whether the gender gap is found in both majority and minority preadolescents, and to investigate whether a possible (gender and ethnic) group difference can be accounted for by differences in home or school hassles.MethodsParticipants were 902 preadolescent students (aged 10 to 12) from two cities in Norway. We collected self-report measures of emotional problems and home and school hassles. Using mediated moderation analysis we tested whether the interaction effect between gender and ethnic minority background on emotional problems was mediated by home or school hassles.ResultsThe gender gap in emotional problems was restricted to ethnic majority preadolescents. School hassles but not home hassles accounted in part for this effect.ConclusionsThe absence of the gender gap among minority as opposed to majority preadolescents may indicate that social circumstances may postpone or hamper the emergence and magnitude of the gender gap in ethnic minority preadolescents. In this study, school hassles partly accounted for the combined gender and ethnic group differences on emotional problems. This indicates that school hassles may play a role in the higher levels of emotional problems in preadolescent minority boys and consequently the absence of a gender gap found in our minority sample.

Ethnic inequalities in child and adolescent health in the Scandinavian welfare states: The role of parental socioeconomic status – a systematic review

“…Outcome measures for schizophrenia and other psychoses, ADHD/ODD and autism, were based on ICD-9, ICD-10 and DSM-IV criteria. Four out of five studies on overall mental health found that more non-Western immigrant children reported poorer outcomes than their Scandinavian majority peers [35,36,39,40]. In contrast, Virta et al found that Turkish children in Sweden reported better mental and emotional health than Swedish children and Turkish children in Norway [37].…”

“…In four of the five studies on general mental health outcomes, ethnic inequalities in mental health seemed to disappear after adjusting for SES and other variables [35-37,40]. In the remaining studies on general mental health, schizophrenia and other psychoses, low-functioning autism, and ADHD/ODD, ethnic differences in mental health decreased slightly but remained significant after adjusting for SES and other variables [38,39,41-43].…”

Preadolescents with Immigrant Backgrounds: The Relationship between Emotional Problems, Parental Achievement Values, and Comparison

“…Other examples of potentially confounding variables are academic factors that have been associated with both emotional problems and parental achievement values, such as school hassles, lack of parental help with homework, and domestic chore burden, which is included as an academic factor as a result of its negative association with academic competence (28). More school hassles have been associated with emotional problems (29). Parental help with homework has been associated with positive academic outcomes (30), although general findings are mixed (31).…”

Immigrant Preadolescents and Risk of Emotional Distress

“…Similarly, participants with two Norwegian-born parents and at least three Norwegian-born grandparents were classified as ethnic Norwegians; they will be referred to as the majority from now on. All preadolescents who were not classified as belonging to the categories "ethnic Norwegian" or "ethnic minority" were excluded from further analyses (9). This yielded a sample of 902 preadolescents who were evenly divided across age and gender.…”