Title: Decoding Acculturative Stress and Psychological Distress in Mexican Immigrant
Women: Insights from a Path Mediation Analysis
Version: 2 Date: 21 Jan 2024
Reviewer's report:
Thank you for the opportunity to review this manuscript. Although the manuscript’s topic
(mental health in immigrant women) is relevant, I do have some critical feedback and
suggestions for improvement.
One of my major comments has to do with the authors’ references. In their literature review, the
authors utilize references that are inappropriate and perhaps misleading as they are not studies of
Latina women. For example, Birman et al. (2005) deals with a sample from the old Soviet Union;
Arbona et al. (2010) and Park et al. (2012) examined high school students; Consoli et al. (2013)
examined adolescents; Gonzalez-Prendes et al. (2019) studied college students; and Ra et al.
(2015) examined Korean individuals. Moreover, the actual reference list is incorrect. The authors
cite some studies in their text that are not listed in the reference section. Thus, the authors should
clean up their reference section. I also strongly recommend that the authors rewrite much of their
literature review so that it focuses on community samples of Latina immigrant stress and mental
health, while including many important papers that the authors did not include. These include
Magan and Hovey’s (2003) article in J of Immigrant Health in which they find acculturative
stressors that are particular to Latina women; Salgado de Snyder’s (1987) article in Psychology
of Women Quarterly, in which she examined acculturative stress and depression in a sample
of Mexican immigrant women; Hovey and Magana’s (2003) in Archives of Suicide Research,
which examined acculturative stress and mental health in a sample of Latina immigrants; and
Dueweke et al.’s (2015) article in Journal of Rural Health, which examined coping in a sample
of Latina immigrants. In sum, the literature review needs to include articles that are more topical
and provide for a stronger argument for why this paper is important – otherwise, the reader will
not be able to understand just what this present paper adds to the literature on Latina immigrant
mental health.
The authors begin their paper with a discussion of current demographics in which they note
the recent Latin composition of the U.S. population. However, the authors use a database
that is twenty years old. Is there anything the authors can provide that would justify the
use of this database to reflect modern mental health and functioning? If not, then at the
minimum, the authors should note the dated database as a limitation and should caution about
the generalizability of these data.
Regarding the measures, I would suggest that the authors should give more details about the
actual items – not just the statements, but the response choices. For example, for acculturative
stress, how exactly were these items phrased? Did they actually ask about stress? Or did they
only ask about levels “feelings of guilt,” “difficulty interacting,” and so forth. If stress wasn’t
actually measured, then the use of a proxy measure for stress greatly weakens the study.
Under the “demographics characteristics” section, the authors compare percentages between
Mexican immigrant women and Latina immigrants combined. Are these differences statistically
significant? Because the title of the paper includes the words “Mexican immigrant women,” I
am wondering why the paper wasn’t solely focused on Mexican immigrant women.
Regarding contextual factors findings, was familismo associated with acculturative stress? I’m
unclear about why this wasn’t included in the model as familismo would certainly be expected
to associate (and alter) acculturative stress.
The authors report only one indirect effect: racial discrimination. If indeed this is the only
significant indirect effect, then this means that acculturative stress does not serve as a mediator
for the other contextual variables, which would invalidate the model. The authors should report
goodness of fit indices for their model, to justify the use of the model itself.
In their “review of results” section, the authors discuss how variables affected other variables.
Authors should reword this section as their study was correlational, and thus cause and effect
language isn’t appropriate.
Authors found that “contentment with decision to move to the United States” was significantly
related to acculturative stress. I believe other studies (e.g., Hovey 2000 in Ethnic Diversity and
Ethnic Minority Psychology) have examined similar variables, such as agreement with decision
to migrate. I would suggest that authors discuss their finding vis-à-vis previous work.
In looking at the model in Figure 1, it would appear that some of the variables (religious comfort;
familism; family abroad) might work together with acculturative stress as moderators. I would
suggest that authors should thus justify their roles as mediators in the model.