Roles of acculturation patterns, ethnic identity, and social support in the subjective well-being of Korean adolescents in the Philippines

• Main Author: Song, Youn Mi
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2014
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_doctoral/373
• Institution: De La Salle University

The present study explored the factors that helped the effective cultural adjustment among Korean adolescents in the Philippines and examined the role of acculturation patterns, ethnic identity, and social support from parents and friends. To understand the depth and breadth of this phenomenon, this study used sequential explanatory mixed method design which was done after analyzing the quantitative data and the qualitative data, followed by integrating both in the interpretation stage. For the quantitative study, all 346 Korean adolescents answered the questionnaires, 194 adolescents identified as belonging to the separation group and 129 adolescents belonged to integration group. For the qualitative study, 8 participants (integration = 4, separation = 4) were selected based on the highest scores of SWB and 8 participants (integration = 4, separation = 4) who had the lowest scores on SWB were selected. Based on the results of both the quantitative and qualitative studies, this study identified five items: (1) The two most used acculturation patterns among Korean adolescents were integration and separation strategies and integration group is happier than separation group, (2) Ethnic identity, social support from parents and friend predicted SWB among the integration group for the separation group, ethnic identity and social support from parents predicted SWB, (3) Acculturation patterns moderated the relationship between social support from parents and SWB, and social support from friend and SWB. The relationship between parents support and friends support and life satisfaction are significant in the integration group and in the separation group, (4) integration and separation presents similar facilitating factors and hindering factors. Meanwhile, integration and separation groups were quite flexible in their ways of adjusting to the Philippines context which reflect the collectivist nature, (5) other factors were also explored in the qualitative study. Implications, limitations and recommendations of the study were discussed.