BRANCH Studies 

Our research focuses broadly on the health and well-being of immigrant and refugee families after settling in Canada, with a special focus on family relationships. Our ongoing research studies are detailed below. 

Connecting Refugee

Families in the Community 

This line of research aims to build relationships between newly arrived families and those who have lived here for a long time. We are learning how to make Victoria a welcoming place for refugee families. In collaboration with the Victoria Immigrant Refugee Centre Society (VIRCS), we are studying how Canadian families and refugee families can learn from one another’s cultures and how they can work together to build community in Victoria. With the information we gather we will develop a program in Victoria that builds social connection and cultural exchange between refugee and long-term resident families. 

Maintaining Strong Family Ties 

We are currently evaluating a workshop series that we developed to help parents and youth within immigrant and refugee families to maintain and strengthen their emotional connections.  The challenges of immigrating to a new country and acculturating within a new culture can create strains within families. For example, familiar relationship dynamics can be disrupted as children are requested to serve as translators and interpreters for their parents. These changes can undermine parents’ ability to serve as emotional resources for their children as they navigate adolescence. We have developed a series of  workshops aimed at helping family members maintain strong emotional ties despite cultural differences among family members so that the mental health and well-being of each family    member is supported.

Family-Wide Acculturation Processes 

We are currently recruiting families to participate in a study that explores in-depth the experience of similarities and differences in acculturation among family members. We are meeting with immigrant and refugee families from multiple ethnic backgrounds to learn about how different families members balance their involvement with Canadian culture with the retention of their ethnic heritage culture. In this research, we are interested in exploring the nature of acculturation discrepancies between spouses and between siblings, to complement the literature’s predominant focus on parent-child dyads.

Program Evaluations 

We are pleased to collaborate with two essential agencies in the community to help evaluate services that are currently offered to enhance health and well-being in the immigrant and refugee community. These projects focus on: 

  • An evaluation of the services offered by the Vancouver Island Counselling Centre for Immigrants and Refugees (VICCIR)
  • An evaluation of a school-based art therapy program that is sponsored by the Victoria Immigrant and Refugee Centre Society (VIRCS)

Longitudinal Study of 

Immigrant Chinese Families

We collected data from 181 immigrant Chinese families. Our sample is unique in that most of the participants were randomly recruited from across Victoria and the Lower Mainland. In each family, mothers, fathers, and youth participated by individually completing booklets of questionnaires. The questions ask family members about multiple aspects of their lives, including their acculturation experiences, values and cultural identifications, parenting approaches, rule sand expectations in the family, experience of stress, relationship health, and individual mental health.

Family members answered questions for us at two points in time, 18 months apart. These longitudinal data allow us to observe how acculturation and adaptation processes change for different family members and to explore how conditions at one point in time related to outcomes later in life.  Through papers, conference presentations, and student dissertations, we have explored many topics. Some of the main topics we have investigated so far include:

  • The relationship between parents’ acculturation experiences and their feelings of efficacy as parents
  • The nature of parents’ co-parenting relationship and how the ability of parents to work together as parents is impacted by their individual acculturation experiences
  • The nature of parents efforts to teach their children about their Chinese cultural heritage (“enculturation”)
  • Changes in feelings of ethnic identity among adolescents over time
  • The role of ethnic identity in mitigating the experience of stress
  • The extent to which youth provide translation and interpretation services for their parents (“language brokering”) and its links with parent-child relationship quality and individual psychological adjustment
  • The predictors and consequences of poverty in immigrant families
  • The extent to which family members differ from one another in their acculturation experiences
  • How parent-child acculturation discrepancies relate to children’s academic and psychological health
  • How mother-father acculturation discrepancies impact their ability to work together as parents