ABSTRACT
The current study examined the sociodemographic factors associated with perceived and experienced anti-Chinese discrimination and discrimination as a predictor of psychological distress and loneliness among Chinese Canadians. A cross-sectional online survey was conducted in early 2021 with a sample of 899 Chinese Canadians (i.e., immigrants, citizens, visitors, and international students) during the Wave 2 of the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, anti-Chinese discrimination was generally associated with younger age and poor financial or health status. Christianity/Catholicism believers were less likely to report perceived discrimination, whereas being married/partnered and living with family reduced the incidences of experienced discrimination. Most importantly, hierarchical linear regression models showed that both perceived and experienced discrimination predicted higher psychological distress (βs = 4.90–7.57, ps ≤ .001) and loneliness (βs = .89–1.73, ps ≤ .003), before and after controlling for all related sociodemographic covariates. Additionally, older age, higher education, better financial or health status could all buffer psychological distress, whereas living with family or in a house and better financial or health status could mitigate feeling of loneliness. The results suggested that discrimination has a robust detrimental impact on mental health conditions among Chinese Canadians.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Helen Cao and Linke Yu for their diligent support in participant recruitment and data collection. We also thank Dr. Xiaolin Wei (Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto) for his insightful comment at the early stage of this project.
Author’s Contributions
Dr. Lixia Yang played a leading role in conceptualization, data curation, analysis, project administration, and manuscript writing. Kesaan Kandasamy and Dr. Ling Na contributed intensively to literature review and manuscript preparation (writing, review and editing). Dr. Peizhong Peter Wang, Dr. Weiguo Zhang, and Dr. Ling Na contributed to the design of the survey and the data collection, as well as manuscript review.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).