ABSTRACT
Language brokering occurs frequently in immigrant families. Using data from 279 Chinese American families with adolescents who function as language brokers for their parents, the current study developed a comprehensive scale to assess adolescents' and their parents' perceptions of language brokering. Both versions, parent and adolescent, showed stable factor structures. We also examined measurement equivalence, including factorial and construct-validity invariance, for each subscale across parent gender, adolescent gender, adolescent nativity, and translation frequency. In general, metric factorial invariance was observed for most subscales across the different groups; these subscales can thus be used in future studies examining the relations between language brokering and other variables. Further, two adolescent subscales (i.e., adolescent-focused burden, positive relations with parents) and three parent subscales (i.e., parent-focused burden, negative feelings, positive relations with child) demonstrated strong factorial invariance consistently across different groups, and can thus be used in future studies examining mean group differences in language-brokering experiences. In terms of construct-validity equivalence, most subscales were associated with parent-child conflict and adolescent depressive symptoms to a similar degree across parent gender, adolescent gender, and nativity. Implications of the current findings and recommendations for future use are discussed.
