Su Yeong Kim

Biography

Dr. Kim studies adolescent adjustment among Asian and Latino immigrant families in the US, focussing on how immigration influences parenting practices and, consequently, adolescent mental health and school achievement. In a 2006 paper appearing in the Journal of Community Psychology, Kim and her collaborators (Gonzales, Stroh, and Wang) examine the relationship between cultural marginalization and the expression of depressive symptoms in Asian American mothers, fathers, and adolescents. The study demonstrates that differences in the relationship between marginality and depressive symptoms between parents and adolescents are due to disparate contexts of reception to the host country within immigrant family members.

In the area of Health Disparities, Dr. Kim's research focuses on the high levels of mood disorders in the general population of Asian Americans, which is in sharp contrast to the depiction of Asian Americans as the “model minorities” in the US. She also conducts research in the thematic area of Children, Youth and Families, where she frequently draws comparisons on the two most visible immigrant groups in the US, Chinese and Mexican families. Dr. Kim also conducts research in Education and the Transition to Adulthood where she is currently analyzing data from a two-wave longitudinal sample of Chinese American adolescents and their parents. In this project, the target adolescents are currently about 18 years of age and are transitioning into adulthood and the labor force.

NIH Biosketch