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 |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1076-1092 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| Journal | Psychology and Health |
| Volume | 37 |
| Issue number | 9 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Keywords
- COVID-19/epidemiology
- Cross-Sectional Studies
- Health Literacy
- Humans
- Israel/epidemiology
- Pandemics
- Resilience, Psychological
- Stress, Psychological/epidemiology
- Transients and Migrants
