A Study of Acculturation, Coping and Psychological Well-Being of New Immigrant Women from Mainland China

This dissertation, "A Study of Acculturation, Coping and Psychological Well-being of New Immigrant Women From Mainland China" by Wai-wah, Fung, 馮偉華, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: Abstract of the thesis entitled A Study of Acculturation, Coping and Psychological Well-Being of New Immigrant Women from Mainland China Submitted by FUNG Wai-wah for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong in January 2005 This study explored the acculturation and coping process of new immigrant women migrated to Hong Kong from Mainland China. Findings of studies conducted in pluralistic or multicultural societies have consistently shown that integration is the strategy that could bring about the most favourable adjustment outcome of immigrants, while marginalization the most unfavourable, with separation and assimilation in between. However, it is argued that when the dominant group is expecting immigrants to assimilate, such as in the case of Hong Kong, immigrants adopting an integration strategy may face with more stress since the larger society is less tolerant of cultural diversity; instead, adopting an assimilation strategy may result in the most adaptive adjustment and better psychological well-being, since they can gain entrance to the larger society and avoid the pressure demanding them to abandon their native culture. It was hypothesized that among the four modes of acculturation, the order in terms of adaptive adjustment in descending order should then be: assimilation, integration, iimarginalization, and separation. Besides, a conceptual framework that accounts for the relationships among the variables of demands facing the immigrant women, stress of acculturation, level of acculturation, social support, coping and psychological well-being of new immigrant women was proposed and tested in this study. A correlation study was used to test the various hypotheses. Respondents were 410 new immigrant married women from Mainland China, who had been residing in Hong Kong for less than twenty-four months. Data were collected through individual interviews with the use of a set of structured questionnaire. Two instruments on measuring stress of acculturation and level of acculturation were specially developed for this study. As predicted, the assimilated respondents were found to have the lowest level of stress of acculturation and the highest level of psychological well-being, whereas the separated group had the highest level of stress of acculturation and the lowest level of psychological well-being. The integrated and marginalized groups were having intermediate levels of stress and well-being. Basing on the findings of the study and the literature reviewed, a preliminary model is postulated to explain the interplay between immigrants' mode of acculturation and acculturation ideology of the iiiabsorbing society and the possible outcome of adjustment in terms of psychological well-being. The use of avoidance coping was found to relate to higher level of acculturation stress and lower level of psychological well-being. Problem-solving coping was positively related to psychological well-being. While for seeking social support coping, the effect is somewhat mixed. The findings imply that, in an assimilation-oriented social environment, social services for new immigrants should be directed to promoting more positive interactions between them and native people and in fostering immigrants' identification to the local culture. At the macro level, it is advocated