Perceived Context of Reception Among Recent Hispanic Immigrants: Conceptualization, Instrument Development, and Preliminary Validation.

Context of reception has been discussed widely in the sociological and anthropological literature, but no measures of this construct exist. We designed a measure of perceived context of reception and provide initial support for the factorial validity, internal consistency reliability, and incremental and discriminant validity of scores generated by this measure. A sample of 302 recent-immigrant Hispanic parent-adolescent dyads from Miami and Los Angeles completed the new perceived context of reception measure, as well as measures of perceived discrimination; Hispanic/American cultural practices, values, and identifications; and depressive symptoms. In Phase 1, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses extracted a factor for negative perceived context of reception. A subscale corresponding to this factor was used in Phase 2; for parents and adolescents, negative perceived context of reception and perceived discrimination were differentially associated with acculturation-related variables--suggesting discrimi-nant validity between perceived discrimination and negative perceived context of reception. For adoles-cents at both sites and for parents in Los Angeles only, the negative perceived context of reception dimensions were significantly associated with depressive symptoms 6 months later, over and above the contribution made by perceived discrimination--suggesting incremental validity. Results are discussed in terms of perceived context of reception as a new and emerging construct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]