Developing a scale to measure the communication style of parents from refugee background

Parents’ communication with their children is considered salient for their normal development and socialisation. Parents, from a refugee background, who enter Australia on humanitarian grounds, have the added responsibility of using communication to facilitate the acculturation of their children. Communication can be adaptive or maladaptive and can also include messages of hope, aspiration and support. The parents’ communication can be effected by their own acculturation process and challenges. In spite of the significance of these parents’ communication with their children, there has not been any attempt to measure their communication patterns with a valid scale. The present study developed a scale to measure the parents, from a refugee background, perception of their communication with their children. The impact of demographic variables, acculturation and acculturative stress on communication was also investigated. Items were generated by the research team after consulting literature and experts. Former refugees from Congo, Ethiopia and Burma were invited to participate in the study. Data were collected with the assistance of Access Community Services Ltd. a refugee settlement non-government organisation in Brisbane, Australia, and is part of a larger ARC Linkage project (LP12020076). Parents (N= 148), who had at least one child in school, participated in the study and completed a battery of questionnaires in their own respective language. Exploratory factor analysis identified a 20- item “Refugee Parents’ Communication Scale” with three factors. Engagement (factor1) measured the parent-child relationship evident by spending time together, common interests and mutual respect. Hopes/Aspirations (factor 2), reflected parents communication with their children about educational and employment goals of these youngsters. Dissonance (factor 3) was associated with parent-child conflict and perceived negative influence of living in Australia. A series of MANOVAS were conducted to examine the effect of participants’ age, education, country of origin, employment, English proficiency, acculturation and acculturative stress on their communication style as measured by the three subscales of the Refugee Parents’ Communication Scale. There was a significant effect for gender, county of origin, acculturation and acculturative stress. There was no effect for other variables. Further, post hoc analyses indicated that women scored significantly higher than men on the Engagement scale. Participants from Congo reported higher scores on the Dissonance scale than those from either Ethiopia or Burma. Higher acculturation was linked to higher scores on the Engagement and Hopes/Aspiration subscales. Higher acculturative stress was linked to higher scores on the Dissonance scale. The outcome highlights the communication style utilised by the former refugee parents. Though, the communication style resembles with that from the Western dominant culture, some unique features were also outlined. The acculturation and acculturative stress appeared to be intertwined with the adaptive and maladaptive forms of the communication. The scale has the potential to be used in future in the research and clinical settings