Peer Discrimination, Deviant Peer Affiliation, and Latino/a Adolescent Internalizing and Externalizing Symptoms: A Prospective Study

ABSTRACT

Objective

U.S. Latino/a adolescents experience high levels of ethnic discrimination, particularly in new immigrant destinations. Due to the salience of peers during adolescence, this study examined how peer discrimination related directly and indirectly, through deviant peer affiliation, to changes in Latino/a adolescents’ internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Culture-specific moderators hypothesized to buffer discrimination impacts on adolescent symptomology included Spanish language enculturation and adolescents’ social ties to relatives in the family’s country-of-origin.

Method

The sample of 547 Latino/a adolescent participants from the Caminos al Bienestar study (55.4% female; age M = 12.8, range = 11–16) was selected at random from middle schools in a large, suburban school district in Atlanta, Georgia. Three time points of survey data spaced roughly 6 months apart were collected during 2018 and 2019.

Results

Results from longitudinal structural equation models revealed that peer discrimination was associated indirectly with increased externalizing symptoms, through increases in affiliation with deviant peers (β = 0.05; SE = 0.02; B = 0.02; 95% CI = 0.01, 0.09). We did not observe direct or indirect effects of peer discrimination on changes in internalizing symptoms, and we found no significant protective effects of either Spanish language enculturation or social ties with the country-of-origin.

Conclusions

Ethnic discrimination by peers may lead to deviant peer affiliation and, in turn, increased externalizing behaviors. Future research identifying protective factors that buffer discrimination impacts on deviant peer affiliation is needed to inform the development of interventions that can prevent Latino/a adolescents’ externalizing symptoms.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Rebecca M. B. White, PhD for her thoughtful review and contributions to this manuscript and Roushanac Partovi, MPH for her assistance with data management and analysis.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary Material

Supplemental material for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/15374416.2022.2093209

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by research grant [R01 HD090232] (PI: Roche) from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health.