Abstract
Objective: To examine perceived stress in migrants guided by Bornstein’s Specificity Principle in Acculturation Science (BSPAS) theoretical framework. Design: Using a cross-sectional study, we recruited English-language migrants (n = 411) living in Israel to respond to an online questionnaire during the COVID-19 pandemic, from 3 April to 16 May 2020. Main Outcome Measures: The dependent variable comprised the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) scores, which attained an internal consistency of 0.91 in this sample. Results: PSS scores were related to lower age (p < 0.0001), being single (p = 0.0095), not possessing high (p = 0.0069) or medium resilience (p = 0.0002), reporting below average SES (p = 0.0196), being “extremely” worried about getting COVID-19 (p < 0.0001), and having high health literacy (p = 0.0007). Additionally, the interaction between health literacy and resilience (p < 0.0001) showed that migrants with high resilience and high health literacy had the lowest perceived stress; and migrants with low resilience and high health literacy had the highest perceived stress. Conclusions: Interventions are needed to assist migrants during the COVID-19 pandemic. The optimal intervention will aim to address the psychological distress while increasing both health literacy and resilience.
Original language | English |
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Journal | Psychology and Health |
DOIs | |
State | Accepted/In press - 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Keywords
- COVID-19
- Immigrants
- acculturation
- health literacy
- stress
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Applied Psychology
- Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health