Measurement Equivalency of Depression, Anxiety, Reception, and Discrimination in Recent Venezuelan Immigrants to Colombia and the United States

Introduction: The recent exodus of Venezuelans fleeing their country has reached epidemic proportions. According to recent figures, approximately 1.5 to 4 million Venezuelans—about 5 – 10% of the population (e.g., Paez, 2015)—have left Venezuela within the past few years. Most Venezuelans have emigrated to neighboring Colombia, with the second largest number of Venezuelans emigrating to the United States. In line with cultural stress theory (Schwartz et al., 2018), this large-scale displacement of families from their homeland has the potential for grave impact on their mental and physical health and wellbeing, including increased risk for alcohol abuse and illegal drug use.

Methods: A cross-sectional survey questionnaire was administered to 621 Venezuelan parents with at least one child under 18 years of age who emigrated to either the Bogotá, Colombia, area (n = 301), or the Miami, Florida, area (n = 320). The sample was recruited via “word of mouth” and response driven sampling techniques where incentives were provided for participant referrals. Among the survey measures, Venezuelan parents completed the (a) 10-item Boston form of the Centers of Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CESDS), (b) 7-item General Anxiety Disorder Scale (GADS; Spitzer et al., 2006), (c) 6-item Perceived Negative Context of Reception Scale (PNCRS; Schwartz et al., 2014), and (d) 7-item Perceived Discrimination Scale (PDS; Phinney et al., 1998). All survey measures were back-translated and reviewed for linguistic and cultural appropriateness.

Results: Results of multi-group confirmatory factor analysis to assess the measurement equivalency analyses of the four measures (treating latent factor indicators as categorical), indicated that significant (p < .05) and meaningful (d_Cox > .50) differences between Bogotá and Miami groups existed in factor thresholds for one item in the PNCRS measure and three items in the PDS measure indicating greater discrimination and negative reception for Venezuelan immigrants in the Bogotá group versus the Miami group. No meaningful differences were found for factor loadings between the two groups in any of the four measures.

Conclusion: Findings from this study show that differences in factor thresholds (i.e., likelihood to endorse an item by one group over another at the same level of the construct) exist for two of the four examined measures, which suggest greater discrimination and negative reception for Venezuelans in Bogotá than in Miami. The lack of differences in factor loadings, however, suggests that both groups hold equivalent conceptual understanding of examined constructs.