Psychosocial adjustment of Vietnamese immigrants in Hawaiʻi

Abstract

Modem human migration poses one of the greatest challenges of our time. In this study, multiple instruments were administered to participants from the Vietnamese community in Hawai'i to measure their ethnic identity, traumatic history, health, and well-being. Responses were analyzed for difference by gender and for change after immigration, as well as testing for correlations between scales and for predictive power of variables. No differentiation by gender was observed. Significant changes after immigration included loss in well-being and increase in HSCL-24 score. Additionally, the correlation of the newly-developed well-being scale with the HSCL-24 suggests convergent validity for that scale.