Asian American and White American differences on affective distress symptoms: Do symptom reports differ across reporting methods?

This study examined whether Asian Americans and White Americans would show differential patterns of reporting their levels of depressive and social anxiety symptoms depending on the method of reporting. Standard self-report measures of depressive, social anxiety, and somatic symptomatology as well as measures of cultural self-construal and social desirability were administered twice to Asian American and White American participants. The results showed that there were no interaction effects between ethnicity and reporting method in any of the self-report measures, both ethnic groups reported lower levels of depressive symptoms in interview condition than in written condition, and Asian Americans reported higher levels of social anxiety than White Americans on both interview and written conditions. The findings suggest that although the method of reporting does not differentially affect Asian Americans, there are persistent ethnic differences between Asian Americans and White Americans in the types and levels of distress they report.