Journal of Psychological Abnormalities

ISSN - 2471-9900

SES as a mediator for ethnicity and diagnosis

International conference on Adolescent Medicine & Child Psychology

September 28-30, 2015 Houston, USA

Aaron Perkins and Donna Snow

Alliant International University, USA

Posters-Accepted Abstracts: J Psychol Abnorm Child

Abstract :

The current research focuses on whether a consistent difference is present in the clinical diagnosis of children and adolescents in an outpatient mental health setting. Previous research suggests that different ethnicities are diagnosed with different types of disorders consistently. Further, past research offers that SES, age and gender may also impact the likelihood of getting a certain type of diagnosis. The current study presents a unique contribution to the literature by studying a more heterogeneous group of middle class outpatient clients receiving treatment in a largely diverse California city. Therefore, SES will be similar among all participants and essentially held constant. Additionally, the present research includes ethnicity of the clinician to assess for a potential mediating effect of this variable. It is hypothesized that ethnic minority clinicians will lessen the effect of consistent diagnoses for ethnic minority children and adolescents. Initially, an ANOVA will be run to assess for differences in ethnicity and FSIQ scores from the WISC-IV. It is believed that there will be no significant differences between FSIQ scores and ethnicity due to the similarity in SES of the sample. Next, logistic regression will be conducted with age, gender, ethnicity of client and ethnicity of the clinician as the predictor variables. The outcome variable will be diagnostic category. It is hypothesized (based on previous research suggestions) that there will be no differences in diagnosis when all variables are controlled for, since the sample comes from a relatively heterogeneous group with SES and ethnicity of the clinician will be accounted for. Results of this study will be a significant contribution to the field of assessment and treatment of ethnic minority children for many reasons, this, as well as implications, will be discussed in detail.

Biography :

Email: aperkins1@alliant.edu

Top