Prevalence of maladjustment in Indian immigrant children.

During the past two decades there was an unprecedented influx of Indian immigrants - mostly rural - to the industrial centres and cities of the UK. Their children in this country face an uphill task in their adjustment in the new environment, mainly due to traumatic separation of family members, conflict between the home and host culture and inadequate knowledge of the host language. There is a deplorably acute dearth of research and empirical data on the adjustment problems of immigrant children in general and of Indian immigrant children in particular. The purpose of this study was therefore, to provide base line information on the prevalence of maladjustment in Indian immigrant children in comparison with a similar group of English children. By a 20% sampling procedure 52 boys and 52 girls were selected for the study group from the 521 Indian children in the ultimate and penultimate Glasses of junior schools in the city of Leicester. The contrast group consisted of the same number of boys and girls from the host community who were matched for every Indian pupil of the study group sex for sex and class-room for class-room. Data were collected (1) from the parents through structured interviews using Rutter's Scale for parents and (2) from teachers through questionnaire using Rutter's Scale for teachers. Pupils who scored 13 or more deviance scores on the parents' scale and/or 9 or more on the teachers' scale were considered maladjusted. 11% of Indian children and 31.6% of English children were thus considered as maladjusted at home and/or at school. The higher prevalence of maladjusted behaviour in the English than Indian children was statistically significant. The average deviance scores of Indian children were 5.3 (with a range of 0 - 18) at home and 3.3 (with a range of 0 - 18) at school; the avegare deviance scores for the English children were 9.9 (with a range of 0 - 31) at home and 6.1 (with a range of 0 - 25) at school indicating the presence of more deviant behaviour among them than among the Indian children. As a result of the study it was hypothesized that maladjusted behaviour rate among the first generation of Indian immigrant children in the study was lower than the rate in a comparable population of native non-immigrant children. A number of factors were speculatively suggested as contributing to the lower prevalence of maladjustment in Indian than in English children, such as the close supervision and strong discipline in Indian homes and the comparatively short duration of stay of Indian children in this country. Antisocial types of behaviour disorders were more common than neurotic types in both groups; similarly in both groups more boys than girls showed antisocial behaviour disorders. From the advantageous position of hindsight it is realised that for an epidemiological study like the present one, a group of 100 subjects is a small number to arrive at meaningful conclusions. Further, the present study did not seek clinical certitude but only some non-clinical assessment of prevalence of maladjusted behaviour which might serve as a base line information for future studies.