Psychosocial Measures for Asian American Populations: Tools for Direct Practice and Research

Call for Abstracts

Submissions for the web-site, 'Psychosocial Measures for Asian Americans: Tools for Practice and Research' are wanted. The idea for this resource grew out of the meetings of the 1999 Okura Foundation Mental Health Fellows. In their meetings with key NIH staff, mental health policy makers and practitioners, it became clear that the lack of clinical and research tools validated for Asian immigrant and Asian American populations was a serious gap in the knowledge base. This web-site helps to fill this gap. The web-site features abstracts of psychosocial measures validated for Asian populations, translation information (e.g., language availability, conceptual translation difficulties), normative scores, and psychometric data. Measures of mental health, social, or emotional functioning and/or family relationships across the life span are sought.

We are interested in receiving abstracts of measures specifically developed for Asian populations (e.g., depression inventories developed for use with Japanese elders) as well as abstracts of existing measures for which validation information for Asians is available (e.g., norms and psychometric properties of the Beck Depression Inventory for use with Vietnamese adults). Descriptions of data pertaining to any of the East Asian, Southeast Asian, South Asian, or Pacific Islander ethnic communities are welcome. Although published psychometric data are preferred, this is not a requirement.

Submissions should include the following information:

• Name of Instrument
• Author(s) of Abstract with contact information (please include fax and email addresses)
• Reference: If applicable, reference to any published reports of these psychometric data
• Purpose of Instrument
• Description of Instrument (i.e., number of item, response scale, names of the sub-scales and the items which comprise them, length of typical completion time, and scoring instructions)
• Language Availability: Has the measure been translated? Is a translated version available? Where?
• Translation comments: How was the instrument translated? Were there any words or concepts that were difficult to translate (e.g., 'feeling blue')? If so, how were they translated?
• Description of Asian population on which psychometric data are available (i.e., Ethnicity, sample size, gender composition, marital, education, immigration status, level of education and/or income)
• Means and Standard Deviations of responses
• Evidence of Reliability
• Evidence of Validity
• Reference to original version of measure, if relevant
• How to obtain a copy of the measure

Abstracts should be submitted as attachments in any standard word processing package, preferably in MS Word format. They may also be faxed or mailed. While there is no deadline for submissions, we encourage you to submit as early as possible. Abstracts will be reviewed for completeness and to ensure psychometric adequacy. Accepted abstracts will be published on the web-site.

Interested parties should send submissions or inquires to:
Marianne R. Yoshioka, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Columbia University School of Social Work
622 West 113th Street
New York, NY 10025-4600
212-854-5669
212-854-2975
mry5@columbia.edu

If you know other researchers or practitioners who work with Asian populations, please forward this RFA to them.