Help-seeking Behaviors: Summary

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THE HELP-SEEKING BEHAVIORS OF CHINESE-AMERICAN FAMILIES OF CHILDREN WITH SPECIAL NEEDS

Chun-Po Chuang San Francisco, California 2009 Summary Using Chinese-American parents’ personal narratives of their experiences seeking out help for their children’s special needs, this study seeks to give insight to help givers (those professionals who provide special needs services) by elucidating the influence behind what may sometimes seem like elusive and unexplainable behavior on the part of the Chinese-American help seekers. In doing so, this study also hopes to help answer the question of what help-seeking behaviors are exhibited by the ChineseAmerican help seekers. Essentially, this study aims to provide detailed and qualitative feedback to the special needs services providers on behalf of Chinese-American parents of children with special needs – specifically with autism. Based on the ecological system framework as first presented by Urie Bronfenbrenner (1979, 2005), the researcher proposed that there are five levels of subsystems that influence people’s behaviors and adaptation. These include the individual psychological microsystem, the social interactive exosystem, the physical space exosystem, the cultural collective macrosystem, and the historical time chronosystem. The assumption in this research was that even though Chinese-American

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families are living in Western society and participating in American social welfare, their help-seeking behaviors are affected not only by practical situations that they meet in their daily life, but also by cultural beliefs that they practice. Therefore, the influence of both deeply cultural factors and practical social factors should be represented on their individual cognition to ultimately shape their help-seeking behaviors. Given the historical trends that have led to the diverse Chinese-American population present today (Bay Area Census Listserv, 2003; U.S. Census Bureau, 2008), this study also presupposes that the contemporary Chinese-American immigrant experience is uniquely distinct from other American inhabitants’ experiences. This supposition motivates the research to provide a unique and vital cultural impression into the special needs services field in the hopes of expanding its cultural competency. Participants were selected based on a representative sample of Chinese-American families living in the San Francisco Bay Area of California in the United States. The researcher conducted and recorded in-depth interviews with seven participants from five unrelated families. Field notes were taken during observation of familial interaction to supplement interview data. During data collection and data analysis, under the assumption of the ecological system framework, the researcher carefully compared the narratives of each participant. This study utilized an inferential qualitative analysis of the data to discover the influences on help-seeking behavior. A second inferential qualitative analysis was applied to the formerly extracted influences on behavior to reveal trends in the help-seeking behaviors these influences elicited.

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The inferential qualitative analysis yielded nine themes, or factors, of influence on participants’ help-seeking behavior. These nine themes are “Family finances,” “Accessible information,” “Time asset,” “Specific knowledge,” “Communication,” “Marital relationship,” “Social support,” and “Saving face” and they exist along a categorization spectrum from practical factors to cultural considerations, respectively. Furthermore, in the second inferential qualitative analysis performed on these nine themes, it was found that their various influences on each individual, whether positive or negative, strong or weak, generally yielded one of two patterns of help-seeking behaviors. These patterns, or trends, of expressed behavior are denoted as consisting of either a more “Relational approach” or “Individual approach” to seeking help from special needs help givers. Much as the nine influential themes exist on a broad spectrum, so too do the two behavioral patterns; individual help-seeking behavior falls at indiscrete intervals on this behavioral “approach” spectrum, depending specifically on individual past and present psycho-social-ecological experiences. As a pilot study, the results provided substantive concepts for understanding what types of help-seeking behaviors were used among the first generation ChineseAmerican families who have children with special needs in the San Francisco Bay Area and what were the underlying motivations for these behaviors. Since data were collected from seven family members from a representative sample, all of whom have rich experiences and have been affected in some way by this issue of seeking help, the findings can appropriately represent the common themes that most of these Chinese-

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American immigrant families who have children with special needs in the San Francisco Bay Area face. These findings thus also produced implications for special needs service providers in the San Francisco Bay Area. Though the representative sample can be used to extrapolate that these nine themes and two behavioral trends exist for the larger Chinese-American population as a whole, this qualitative study should not be construed as providing correlational nor causative factors for the studied behavior. Future studies may expand on this research through quantitative analysis that may better answer correlational and causational inquiry. Additional limitations on generalizing these findings to a larger set of the Chinese-American population include constraints from spatial and chronological effects on the people involved. The spatial location of selected participants implies they are subject to local San Franciscan policies, laws, services, and ecological systems and to California state policies, laws, services, and ecological systems as well, which may very well differ from other cities’ and states’ policies, laws, services, and ecological systems with regard to special needs services. The chronological range of this study occurs at a unique point on the timeline of Chinese-American immigrants in America, and future studies will certainly encounter participants immersed in a very different (bio-) psychosocial-histori-ecological context from the one experienced by the participants of this study. Other limitations of this study are due to the qualitative research design and practice, despite efforts by the researcher to control various variables across participants to ensure reliable and accurate data collection and thus provide dependable inferences.

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Firstly, regarding credibility of data collection, both the prolonged engagement and persistent observation criteria were hard to perfectly meet during a short-term contact. Even though the researcher has rich experiences in working with this family group and also has volunteered at related Chinese-American associations in the Bay Areas, the study was limited by a few variables. For examples, participants coming from different sub-cultural backgrounds, the specific situational setting for each interview, and the frequency of contact with each participant, were all factors that limited the data collection process. Secondly, regarding transferability of the results, based on the feasibility of this study, participants were recruited by the representative association. Although the research attempted to include maximum variation in purposive sampling, it was still limited in that it was unable to work with families not connected with resources. Their considerations and patterns of help-seeking behaviors are worth further exploration. Thirdly, in regards to the dependability and reliability of the methods, although the researcher recruited from FCSN, most members were of Taiwan and mainland China origin. There were few immigrants from Hong Kong, thus limiting the applicability scope of the findings. Regardless of some limitations in this study, the findings are valuable for both academic and practical fields. In terms of the academic implications, the findings could be tested in an attempt to replicate them in order to increase the effectiveness of the presented results. Additional results might contribute to new hypotheses or theories and help to expand qualitative understandings of Chinese-American help-seeking behavior.

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Practical implications of the results include providing rich knowledge of help-seeking behaviors and motivations, and equipping help-giving service providers with extended cultural sensitivity to Chinese-American families. This extensive and qualitative feedback of sorts can hopefully bring improvement in service quality and, in doing so, provide a great contribution to the multicultural American society and other communities. Seeking help is unquestionably a part of the thoughts of people who encounter difficulties. And, both the characteristics of cooperation and altruism are a part of human nature as well. It is difficult for one to live an entire lifetime alone, and these bumps in the road are important for development and growth of one’s life. Based on our own personal life difficulties, we are able to imagine others’ trials and to empathize with their emotions, as well as to give people helping hands to pursue better lives each one hopes for and truly wants. However, although we have the same human nature and capability to help one another, our cultural diversity and varying social environments regularly construct our uniquely individual lives. It is not an easy goal to have every service provider with cultural sensitivity contact help seekers, but we can try to sustain this positive attitude with respect--a deep respect to human nature, for everyone and oneself. As Carl Rogers (1995) reflected in On Becoming a Person, the three abilities, congruence (genuineness), empathy, and unconditional positive regard, are the core target of a therapist’s training. Yet, he also mentions that the goal of empathy is hard to reach because it refers to a part of a

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person’s character. From the viewpoint of psychology we have understood that some reasons for the difficulty might be damage to the ability related to the sense of subject and cause the emotional and behavioral outcome as the people with autism do. This study seeks to bridge communication gaps between these Chinese-American help seekers and their professional help givers. By creating a space for open understanding, the two groups can hopefully collaborate and truly work to benefit the child with special needs. As Harvey Milk said during the movement towards Gay Rights (Black, 2009) in California, …Without hope, the "us's" give up. And I know you can't live on hope alone. But without hope, life is not worth living. So you, and you, and you, you got to give them hope. You got to give them hope. ...... And as Norman Maclean mentioned in his famous book, A River Runs Through It (1976), “… but you can love completely without complete understanding (p.103).” With hope and love, the service provider communities can all strive to make a difference in the lives of these Chinese-American families, of these immigrant parents, and of these children with special needs.