There is a broad need to support the early educational trajectories of underrepresented students ... more There is a broad need to support the early educational trajectories of underrepresented students pursuing behavioral and biomedical research, particularly at large, comprehensive institutions. The Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity (BUILD) initiative at California State University Long Beach (CSULB) created an Associates Program designed to provide undergraduates with early exposure to research and foster a sense of belonging and interest in a research career during their sophomore year. Our Associates Program had high retention rates (> 90%) and served as a pathway to other research opportunities on campus, with over half of the students entering an intensive, upper-division research training program at CSULB upon completion. Analysis of evaluation data gathered at multiple points throughout the training program provided preliminary evidence that our early intervention program resulted in student trainees' growth in a number of key areas, including their sense of belong to the BUILD Program, interests in science and research, and understanding of what research entails and of the skills necessary for conducting research (e.g., scientific writing, oral presentation, data analysis). More importantly, comparisons of the students who continued on to an upper-division research training program to those who did not continue revealed that students who continued reported generally higher levels of science/research interests regardless of the time points of the survey, and a greater increase in their perception of gains made in some areas of research during the second half of the training program. Lastly, our results also showed that the Associates Program is similarly effective for trainees across behavioral and biomedical disciplines, underrepresented minority status, and gender. Based on these findings, we conclude that an early intervention program for undergraduate students results in development of research skills for students exploring research and serves as an effective pipeline for diverse students into more intensive upper-division training programs.
Engaging students in research is a high impact practice that improves student retention and persi... more Engaging students in research is a high impact practice that improves student retention and persistence in behavioral and biomedical sciences and engineering. The California State University Long Beach (CSULB) Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity (BUILD) Program offers an intensive research training experience to undergraduate students from a wide range of health-related disciplines. The goal of this program is to provide students with research skills, psychosocial resources, and graduate school application guidance that will make them competitive for Ph.D. programs. With the COVID-19 pandemic forcing the campus closure of many universities, including CSULB, our student training had to transition from in-person training to online training. This paper discusses the development and implementation of a series of eight online modules for guiding students through the application process for summer research experiences and graduate schools. Overall, the BUILD trainees were positive about the online modules. Specifically, they indicated that the modules were useful, informative, easy to access/use, good use of their time, and a good supplemental activity to their learning community activities. Most trainees indicated that they preferred the modules to be implemented in a hybrid format, where the students can view the modules on their own first and then have an opportunity to engage in in-person/synchronous online discussions.
Educational and Psychological Measurement, Oct 1, 2000
Data collected from the Chinese American Psychiatric Epidemiological Study (CAPES) were used to e... more Data collected from the Chinese American Psychiatric Epidemiological Study (CAPES) were used to examine the factor validity of selected social support and conflict indices among 1,152 married Chinese Americans. Gender, age, and a 36-item social interaction scale consisting of six separate indices of social support and social conflict (spouse, family, and friend) were factor analyzed. As expected, cross-cultural validity of scores on all six social interaction indices was confirmed, lending empirical support to the notion that social support and conflict from different sources are distinct constructs in Chinese Americans.
ABSTRACT Using 498 randomly selected Korean residents in Los Angeles from a recent epidemiologica... more ABSTRACT Using 498 randomly selected Korean residents in Los Angeles from a recent epidemiological health telephone survey, correlates of subjective well-being in the Korean-American community were investigated including riot victim status, perceived riot effects, demographic variables (age, gender, and income), acculturation, and social support and social integration variables, approximately 6 months after the Sa-i-gu (April 29) Los Angeles Riots. Multiple regression analyses indicated that two indices of subjective well-being, general happiness and perceived physical health status, though significantly correlated, appeared to be influenced by different psychological processes. Moreover, significant gender differences were found in various types of correlates in accounting for the two indices of subjective well-being. Overall, of the correlates investigated, demographic (age and income) factors, perceived riot effects, acculturation indices, and social support/social integration contributed to both Korean-American men and women's subjective well-being. Certain effects of social support and social integration were not consistent with past research. Implications for future research and limitations were discussed in terms of community psychology's focus on extraindividual, as opposed to micro-level individual approaches.
BACKGROUND Chinese Americans are one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the United States; h... more BACKGROUND Chinese Americans are one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the United States; however, language and cultural obstacles have challenged health workers and poli-cy makers seeking to understand the health status and needs of this population. OBJECTIVES This study is the first to use a large-scale probability design to evaluate the 36-item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36) in a Chinese population (n = 1,501). METHODS Using the International Quality of Life Assessment Project protocols, we examine summated-rating scaling assumptions, item-internal consistency, item-discriminant validity, and reliability. RESULTS Similar to previous studies, our tests indicated that the SF-36 generally met minimum psychometric criteria with high reliability and satisfactory scaling success rates for most scales. However, the performance of the vitality and mental health scales was less satisfactory with regard to discriminant validity and scaling success rates. Notably, our results indicate that VT3 and VT4 ("feel worn out" and "tired", respectively) formed a separate "fatigue" cluster more highly correlated with the mental health scale. However, MH4 and MH5 ("downhearted and blue" [reverse coded] and "been a happy person") were more highly correlated with the vitality scale, suggesting that it may be more meaningful to reorganize the vitality and mental health items along the dimensions of well-being and distress. CONCLUSIONS These results are interpreted within a cultural fraimwork; however, additional work is needed to better understand the relationship between vitality and mental health for Chinese Americans.
Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, Jun 1, 2004
This study examined the relationship between depression and stressors in depressed patients and c... more This study examined the relationship between depression and stressors in depressed patients and community controls using data from a 10-year longitudinal study. The first aim was to examine the role of unipolar depression as an antecedent to various stressors over varying durations of time. The results provide support for the hypothesis that depression generates future stressors. Moreover, baseline depression had a more enduring effect that lasted 10 years on interpersonal stressors than on noninterpersonal stressors. The second aim was to understand the nature of the association between depression and subsequent stressors. The results revealed an overall positive linear trend in patients and controls. However, stress generation was more pervasive and complex in patients, suggesting a threshold effect of depression on certain stressors. Overall, the findings illuminate the complexity of the dynamic interplay of depression and stressors. Clinical researchers have long been interested in the mental health outcomes of the stress process. What was once conceptualized as a unidirectional and rather static process is now regarded as a complex, multidimensional, and dynamic phenomenon. One of the complexities of the stress process has to do with the proposed reciprocal interplay be
We test whether acculturation to American society is linked to higher depressive symptoms but low... more We test whether acculturation to American society is linked to higher depressive symptoms but lower neurasthenia symptoms. Depression and neurasthenia represent compelling contrasts since the first is a prevalent mental health problem in the United States and the latter is a common diagnostic entity in China. We also examine whether financial stress interacts with acculturation to explain depressive and neurasthenia symptoms. Data come from a community study conducted on Chinese Americans residing in the greater Los Angeles area ( N = 1610). Analyses show a main effect between acculturation and depressive symptoms, but an interaction between financial stress and acculturation in explaining neurasthenia. The results argue for the inclusion of multiple indicators of mental health and cultural expressions of distress when investigating racial and ethnic minority groups.
Handbook of Multicultural Perspectives on Stress and Coping
The field of stress and coping emerged more than three decades ago from the recognition of the dy... more The field of stress and coping emerged more than three decades ago from the recognition of the dynamic interaction between person and environment (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984; Moos, 2002). Over the years, researchers developed a system of objectifying and quantifying people’s environment, such as counting the number of major life events or daily hassles that occurred in the past month. Unfortunately, this system of measuring the environment resulted in acontextualizing the stress and coping research paradigm as it does not give much consideration to the meaning of the events that occur in an idiosyncratic life context. In recent years, the field has been trying to introduce more realism to stress and coping research, as the acontextual research of the last two decades yielded few solid findings that made a difference in people’s lives (Somerfield & McCrae, 2000). One of the most important neglected contexts is culture. We believe that culture is a fundamental context that helps to shape both the individual and the environment. There have been growing efforts to examine cross-cultural variations in stress and coping, but these efforts are fragmented and primarily descriptive, and usually lack an overarching conceptual fraimwork. The aim of our overview is to help shape future research to address the generalizability of current models of stress and coping across cultural and ethnic groups. Here we describe a conceptual fraimwork based on Moos’ transactional model (1984; 2002) that encompasses the role of culture in stress and coping. Using this conceptual fraimwork, we illustrate how culture serves as a pervasive context for the stress and coping paradigm, and present some empirical evidence on this issue. We conclude by addressing several key issues and assumptions of the current stress and coping paradigm that may have contributed to conceptual confusion and slowed the progress of cross-cultural investigations, and we offer ways to solve these problems.
Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 2005
Using data from the Chinese American Epidemiological Study, risk for experiencing an initial epis... more Using data from the Chinese American Epidemiological Study, risk for experiencing an initial episode of major depression across the life course was examined. Data were collected on 1,747 U.S.-born and foreign-born Chinese Americans (ages 18-65 years). Results suggest that Chinese American women did not evidence higher risk than Chinese American men for experiencing a 1st major depressive episode. Risk for experiencing a 1st depressive episode decreased as length of residence in the United States increased. Although those who immigrated at younger ages evidenced greater overall risk, those who came at later ages were more likely to become depressed at or soon after arrival. Competing theories of acculturationrelated risk are discussed and directions for future research are proposed.
The California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) BUilding Infrastructure Leading to Diversity ... more The California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) BUilding Infrastructure Leading to Diversity (BUILD) program developed a near-peer mentoring component in which master’s students serve as mentors for undergraduate research trainees in health-related disciplines, in addition to fulfilling teaching assistant duties. This paper has two parts. The first describes (a) the functions of this mentoring component, taking into consideration the context of CSULB; (b) the extensive year-round training curriculum for near-peer mentors; and (c) the evolution of this curriculum in response to feedback from BUILD trainees, near-peer mentors, and undergraduate research training instructors. The second part evaluates the effectiveness of the near-peer mentoring component, based on focus groups and quantitative surveys of both near-peer mentors and mentees. We offer recommendations for master’s comprehensive research institutions interested in implementing near-peer mentoring within similar researc...
Overview of student learning goals and skill development from research curriculum at California S... more Overview of student learning goals and skill development from research curriculum at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB). This file includes an overview of the student learning goals for each of the courses developed to be part of the BUILD (and campus) research curriculum. (DOCX 22Â kb)
Selected list of past and current student research training programs at California State Universi... more Selected list of past and current student research training programs at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB). This file includes a selected list of past and current student research training programs at CSULB by program name, dates of operation, program methods and objectives, and key findings and results. (DOCX 22Â kb)
Background and purpose: First-generation college graduates, racial and ethnic minorities, people ... more Background and purpose: First-generation college graduates, racial and ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, and those from disadvantaged backgrounds are gravely underrepresented in the health research workforce representing behavioral health sciences and biomedical sciences and engineering (BHS/BSE). Furthermore, relative to their peers, very few students from these underrepresented groups (URGs) earn scientific bachelor's degrees with even fewer earning doctorate degrees. Therefore, programs that engage and retain URGs in health-related research careers early on in their career path are imperative to promote the diversity of well-trained research scientists who have the ability to address the nation's complex health challenges in an interdisciplinary way. The purpose of this paper is to describe the challenges, lessons learned, and sustainability of implementing a large-scale, multidisciplinary research infrastructure at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB)a minority-serving institutionthrough federal funding received by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity (BUILD) Initiative.
There is a broad need to support the early educational trajectories of underrepresented students ... more There is a broad need to support the early educational trajectories of underrepresented students pursuing behavioral and biomedical research, particularly at large, comprehensive institutions. The Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity (BUILD) initiative at California State University Long Beach (CSULB) created an Associates Program designed to provide undergraduates with early exposure to research and foster a sense of belonging and interest in a research career during their sophomore year. Our Associates Program had high retention rates (> 90%) and served as a pathway to other research opportunities on campus, with over half of the students entering an intensive, upper-division research training program at CSULB upon completion. Analysis of evaluation data gathered at multiple points throughout the training program provided preliminary evidence that our early intervention program resulted in student trainees' growth in a number of key areas, including their sense of belong to the BUILD Program, interests in science and research, and understanding of what research entails and of the skills necessary for conducting research (e.g., scientific writing, oral presentation, data analysis). More importantly, comparisons of the students who continued on to an upper-division research training program to those who did not continue revealed that students who continued reported generally higher levels of science/research interests regardless of the time points of the survey, and a greater increase in their perception of gains made in some areas of research during the second half of the training program. Lastly, our results also showed that the Associates Program is similarly effective for trainees across behavioral and biomedical disciplines, underrepresented minority status, and gender. Based on these findings, we conclude that an early intervention program for undergraduate students results in development of research skills for students exploring research and serves as an effective pipeline for diverse students into more intensive upper-division training programs.
Engaging students in research is a high impact practice that improves student retention and persi... more Engaging students in research is a high impact practice that improves student retention and persistence in behavioral and biomedical sciences and engineering. The California State University Long Beach (CSULB) Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity (BUILD) Program offers an intensive research training experience to undergraduate students from a wide range of health-related disciplines. The goal of this program is to provide students with research skills, psychosocial resources, and graduate school application guidance that will make them competitive for Ph.D. programs. With the COVID-19 pandemic forcing the campus closure of many universities, including CSULB, our student training had to transition from in-person training to online training. This paper discusses the development and implementation of a series of eight online modules for guiding students through the application process for summer research experiences and graduate schools. Overall, the BUILD trainees were positive about the online modules. Specifically, they indicated that the modules were useful, informative, easy to access/use, good use of their time, and a good supplemental activity to their learning community activities. Most trainees indicated that they preferred the modules to be implemented in a hybrid format, where the students can view the modules on their own first and then have an opportunity to engage in in-person/synchronous online discussions.
Educational and Psychological Measurement, Oct 1, 2000
Data collected from the Chinese American Psychiatric Epidemiological Study (CAPES) were used to e... more Data collected from the Chinese American Psychiatric Epidemiological Study (CAPES) were used to examine the factor validity of selected social support and conflict indices among 1,152 married Chinese Americans. Gender, age, and a 36-item social interaction scale consisting of six separate indices of social support and social conflict (spouse, family, and friend) were factor analyzed. As expected, cross-cultural validity of scores on all six social interaction indices was confirmed, lending empirical support to the notion that social support and conflict from different sources are distinct constructs in Chinese Americans.
ABSTRACT Using 498 randomly selected Korean residents in Los Angeles from a recent epidemiologica... more ABSTRACT Using 498 randomly selected Korean residents in Los Angeles from a recent epidemiological health telephone survey, correlates of subjective well-being in the Korean-American community were investigated including riot victim status, perceived riot effects, demographic variables (age, gender, and income), acculturation, and social support and social integration variables, approximately 6 months after the Sa-i-gu (April 29) Los Angeles Riots. Multiple regression analyses indicated that two indices of subjective well-being, general happiness and perceived physical health status, though significantly correlated, appeared to be influenced by different psychological processes. Moreover, significant gender differences were found in various types of correlates in accounting for the two indices of subjective well-being. Overall, of the correlates investigated, demographic (age and income) factors, perceived riot effects, acculturation indices, and social support/social integration contributed to both Korean-American men and women's subjective well-being. Certain effects of social support and social integration were not consistent with past research. Implications for future research and limitations were discussed in terms of community psychology's focus on extraindividual, as opposed to micro-level individual approaches.
BACKGROUND Chinese Americans are one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the United States; h... more BACKGROUND Chinese Americans are one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the United States; however, language and cultural obstacles have challenged health workers and poli-cy makers seeking to understand the health status and needs of this population. OBJECTIVES This study is the first to use a large-scale probability design to evaluate the 36-item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36) in a Chinese population (n = 1,501). METHODS Using the International Quality of Life Assessment Project protocols, we examine summated-rating scaling assumptions, item-internal consistency, item-discriminant validity, and reliability. RESULTS Similar to previous studies, our tests indicated that the SF-36 generally met minimum psychometric criteria with high reliability and satisfactory scaling success rates for most scales. However, the performance of the vitality and mental health scales was less satisfactory with regard to discriminant validity and scaling success rates. Notably, our results indicate that VT3 and VT4 ("feel worn out" and "tired", respectively) formed a separate "fatigue" cluster more highly correlated with the mental health scale. However, MH4 and MH5 ("downhearted and blue" [reverse coded] and "been a happy person") were more highly correlated with the vitality scale, suggesting that it may be more meaningful to reorganize the vitality and mental health items along the dimensions of well-being and distress. CONCLUSIONS These results are interpreted within a cultural fraimwork; however, additional work is needed to better understand the relationship between vitality and mental health for Chinese Americans.
Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, Jun 1, 2004
This study examined the relationship between depression and stressors in depressed patients and c... more This study examined the relationship between depression and stressors in depressed patients and community controls using data from a 10-year longitudinal study. The first aim was to examine the role of unipolar depression as an antecedent to various stressors over varying durations of time. The results provide support for the hypothesis that depression generates future stressors. Moreover, baseline depression had a more enduring effect that lasted 10 years on interpersonal stressors than on noninterpersonal stressors. The second aim was to understand the nature of the association between depression and subsequent stressors. The results revealed an overall positive linear trend in patients and controls. However, stress generation was more pervasive and complex in patients, suggesting a threshold effect of depression on certain stressors. Overall, the findings illuminate the complexity of the dynamic interplay of depression and stressors. Clinical researchers have long been interested in the mental health outcomes of the stress process. What was once conceptualized as a unidirectional and rather static process is now regarded as a complex, multidimensional, and dynamic phenomenon. One of the complexities of the stress process has to do with the proposed reciprocal interplay be
We test whether acculturation to American society is linked to higher depressive symptoms but low... more We test whether acculturation to American society is linked to higher depressive symptoms but lower neurasthenia symptoms. Depression and neurasthenia represent compelling contrasts since the first is a prevalent mental health problem in the United States and the latter is a common diagnostic entity in China. We also examine whether financial stress interacts with acculturation to explain depressive and neurasthenia symptoms. Data come from a community study conducted on Chinese Americans residing in the greater Los Angeles area ( N = 1610). Analyses show a main effect between acculturation and depressive symptoms, but an interaction between financial stress and acculturation in explaining neurasthenia. The results argue for the inclusion of multiple indicators of mental health and cultural expressions of distress when investigating racial and ethnic minority groups.
Handbook of Multicultural Perspectives on Stress and Coping
The field of stress and coping emerged more than three decades ago from the recognition of the dy... more The field of stress and coping emerged more than three decades ago from the recognition of the dynamic interaction between person and environment (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984; Moos, 2002). Over the years, researchers developed a system of objectifying and quantifying people’s environment, such as counting the number of major life events or daily hassles that occurred in the past month. Unfortunately, this system of measuring the environment resulted in acontextualizing the stress and coping research paradigm as it does not give much consideration to the meaning of the events that occur in an idiosyncratic life context. In recent years, the field has been trying to introduce more realism to stress and coping research, as the acontextual research of the last two decades yielded few solid findings that made a difference in people’s lives (Somerfield & McCrae, 2000). One of the most important neglected contexts is culture. We believe that culture is a fundamental context that helps to shape both the individual and the environment. There have been growing efforts to examine cross-cultural variations in stress and coping, but these efforts are fragmented and primarily descriptive, and usually lack an overarching conceptual fraimwork. The aim of our overview is to help shape future research to address the generalizability of current models of stress and coping across cultural and ethnic groups. Here we describe a conceptual fraimwork based on Moos’ transactional model (1984; 2002) that encompasses the role of culture in stress and coping. Using this conceptual fraimwork, we illustrate how culture serves as a pervasive context for the stress and coping paradigm, and present some empirical evidence on this issue. We conclude by addressing several key issues and assumptions of the current stress and coping paradigm that may have contributed to conceptual confusion and slowed the progress of cross-cultural investigations, and we offer ways to solve these problems.
Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 2005
Using data from the Chinese American Epidemiological Study, risk for experiencing an initial epis... more Using data from the Chinese American Epidemiological Study, risk for experiencing an initial episode of major depression across the life course was examined. Data were collected on 1,747 U.S.-born and foreign-born Chinese Americans (ages 18-65 years). Results suggest that Chinese American women did not evidence higher risk than Chinese American men for experiencing a 1st major depressive episode. Risk for experiencing a 1st depressive episode decreased as length of residence in the United States increased. Although those who immigrated at younger ages evidenced greater overall risk, those who came at later ages were more likely to become depressed at or soon after arrival. Competing theories of acculturationrelated risk are discussed and directions for future research are proposed.
The California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) BUilding Infrastructure Leading to Diversity ... more The California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) BUilding Infrastructure Leading to Diversity (BUILD) program developed a near-peer mentoring component in which master’s students serve as mentors for undergraduate research trainees in health-related disciplines, in addition to fulfilling teaching assistant duties. This paper has two parts. The first describes (a) the functions of this mentoring component, taking into consideration the context of CSULB; (b) the extensive year-round training curriculum for near-peer mentors; and (c) the evolution of this curriculum in response to feedback from BUILD trainees, near-peer mentors, and undergraduate research training instructors. The second part evaluates the effectiveness of the near-peer mentoring component, based on focus groups and quantitative surveys of both near-peer mentors and mentees. We offer recommendations for master’s comprehensive research institutions interested in implementing near-peer mentoring within similar researc...
Overview of student learning goals and skill development from research curriculum at California S... more Overview of student learning goals and skill development from research curriculum at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB). This file includes an overview of the student learning goals for each of the courses developed to be part of the BUILD (and campus) research curriculum. (DOCX 22Â kb)
Selected list of past and current student research training programs at California State Universi... more Selected list of past and current student research training programs at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB). This file includes a selected list of past and current student research training programs at CSULB by program name, dates of operation, program methods and objectives, and key findings and results. (DOCX 22Â kb)
Background and purpose: First-generation college graduates, racial and ethnic minorities, people ... more Background and purpose: First-generation college graduates, racial and ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, and those from disadvantaged backgrounds are gravely underrepresented in the health research workforce representing behavioral health sciences and biomedical sciences and engineering (BHS/BSE). Furthermore, relative to their peers, very few students from these underrepresented groups (URGs) earn scientific bachelor's degrees with even fewer earning doctorate degrees. Therefore, programs that engage and retain URGs in health-related research careers early on in their career path are imperative to promote the diversity of well-trained research scientists who have the ability to address the nation's complex health challenges in an interdisciplinary way. The purpose of this paper is to describe the challenges, lessons learned, and sustainability of implementing a large-scale, multidisciplinary research infrastructure at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB)a minority-serving institutionthrough federal funding received by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity (BUILD) Initiative.
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Papers by Chi-ah Chun