Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T13:23:23.970Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Cultural meanings of ethnic categories

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Matthew Hodes ,
Jayne Creamer  and
James Woolley
Matthew Hodes*
Affiliation:
Academic Unit of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Imperial College School of Medicine at St Mary's, Norfolk Place, London W2 1PG
Jayne Creamer
Affiliation:
Academic Unit of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Imperial College School of Medicine at St Mary's, London; James Woolley, Ealing Hospital, London
James Woolley
Affiliation:
Academic Unit of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Imperial College School of Medicine at St Mary's, London; James Woolley, Ealing Hospital, London
*
∗Correspondence
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

This study investigated the links between aspects of cultural life and response to ethnic monitoring questions, and compared parental and adolescents' responses. Questionnaires were given to consecutive attenders at a child and adolescent psychiatry department situated in central London. Forty-seven parents participated, and 24 adolescents (aged 12–16 years) also completed questionnaires. Parents came from many parts of the world and their offspring were mostly born in the UK, but had varied cultural life with respect to language, peer group and diet. Just over half of the offspring were regarded as ‘White British’ by parents but the second largest group was that marked ‘other’, who all had mixed identity. There were differences in how parents described adolescents, especially in relation to peer culture. Since ethnic categories have limitations the data should be used carefully, and for many aspects of health planning and delivery other cultural variables would be useful. Consideration should be given to the need for specifying whether adolescents or their parents should respond to ethnic monitoring questions.

Type
Original Papers
Information
Psychiatric Bulletin , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , January 1998 , pp. 20 - 24
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 The Royal College of Psychiatrists

References

Aspinall, P. J. (1995) Department of Health's requirement for mandatory collection of data on ethnic group of inpatients. British Medical Journal 311, 1006–1009.Google Scholar
Balarajan, R. & Raleigh, V. S. (1993) Ethnicity and Health. London: Department of Health.Google Scholar
Ballard, R. (1994) Desh Pradesh. The South Asian Presence in Britain. London: Hurst.Google Scholar
Banks, M. (1996) Ethnicity: Anthropological Constructions. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Banton, M. (1977) The Idea of Race. London: Tavistock.Google Scholar
Banton, M. (1983) Racial and Ethnic Competition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Barth, F. (1969) Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: the Social Organisation of Culture Difference. Bergen and London: Universitets Forlaget and George Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Baumann, G. (1995) Managing a polyethnic milieu: kinship and interaction in a London suburb. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.), 1, 725–741.Google Scholar
Fernando, S. (1995) Mental Health in a Multi-Ethnic Society. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hutchinson, G. & McKenzie, K. (1995) What is an Afro-Caribbean? Implications for psychiatric research. Psychiatric Bulletin, 19, 700–702.Google Scholar
Norusis, M. J. (1993) SPSS for Windows. Chicago: SPSS.Google Scholar
Pumariega, A. J. (1986) Acculturation and eating attitudes in adolescent girls: a comparative and correlational study. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 25, 276–279.Google ScholarPubMed
Senior, P. & Bhopal, R. (1994) Ethnicity as a variable in epidemiological research. British Medical Journal 300, 327–330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tizard, B. & Phoenix, A. (1993) Black, White or Mixed Race? London: Routledge Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.