Date of Conferral

4-30-2025

Date of Award

April 2025

Degree

Ph.D.

School

Psychology

Advisor

Patricia Loun

Abstract

Hispanic parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) were found to have lower psychological distress in comparison with other ethnicities or races despite having additional challenges such as immigration issues, language barriers, or others. However, research on why Hispanic parents of children with ASD tend to have less psychological distress is lacking. This study addressed the extent to which multifamily support and resiliency affect psychological distress among parents of children with ASD, as explained by the family system theory. For this study, 75 Hispanic parents of children with ASD were recruited via Facebook posts. The participants were directed to a SurveyMonkey questionnaire in which they completed the Brief Resiliency Scale (BRS) to measure resiliency, the Family Support Scale (FSS) to measure multifamily support, and the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale-21 (DASS-21) to measure psychological distress. A multiple regression statistical analysis was conducted using IBM SPSS Statistics. Results indicated that resiliency and multifamily support can explain 30% of the variance in psychological distress. Individually, only resiliency was a significant predictor of psychological distress. This study is significant and contributes to positive social change as it may potentially help improve the lives of Hispanic parents of children with ASD by providing insight into preventive or treatment methods for psychological distress in this population.

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