Family connectedness and sexual minority Asian Americans' eating behavior regulation

Thomas P Le; Shahmir H Ali; Annabelle L Atkin; Terence H W Ching; Annamaria Csizmadia; Nguyen K Tran; Ralph J DiClemente

doi:10.1016/j.eatbeh.2023.101817

Family connectedness and sexual minority Asian Americans' eating behavior regulation

Eat Behav. 2023 Dec:51:101817. doi: 10.1016/j.eatbeh.2023.101817. Epub 2023 Sep 16.

Authors

Thomas P Le¹, Shahmir H Ali², Annabelle L Atkin³, Terence H W Ching⁴, Annamaria Csizmadia⁵, Nguyen K Tran⁶, Ralph J DiClemente²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology, Bryn Mawr College, Philadelphia, PA, USA; Department of Psychology, The University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA. Electronic address: tple@brynmawr.edu.
² Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, New York University School of Global Public Health, New York, NY, USA.
³ Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA.
⁴ Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA.
⁵ Department of Human Development and Family Sciences, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA.
⁶ School of Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.

PMID: 37734352
DOI: 10.1016/j.eatbeh.2023.101817

Abstract

To date, psychosocial and interpersonal protective factors such as family connectedness have received little attention in studies of eating behaviors among sexual minority Asian Americans. Therefore, we investigated associations of family connectedness and two types of eating behavior regulation motives and the moderating role of individualism in these associations among 134 sexual minority Asian American young adults. Linear regression models assessed the main and interaction effects of family connectedness and individualism on introjected and identified eating behavior regulation motives. We observed a significant interaction effect between family connectedness and individualism only on introjected regulation. For participants with low levels of individualism, those who reported high levels of family connectedness had lower scores for introjected regulation of eating behavior. The findings of this study highlight the importance of examining strengths related to sexual minority Asian Americans by demonstrating the important role family connectedness plays in eating behavior regulation motives, particularly for those with lower individualism.

Keywords: Asian Americans; Eating behaviors; Family connectedness; Individualism; Sexual minority.

MeSH terms

Asian*
Family Relations*
Feeding Behavior*
Humans
Sexual and Gender Minorities*
Young Adult