Beliefs about parental authority legitimacy among refugee youth in Jordan: Between- and within-person variations

We examined within- and between-person variations in parental legitimacy beliefs in a sample of 883 Arab refugee youth (M(age) = 15.01 years, SD = 1.60), 277 Iraqis, 275 Syrians, and 331 Palestinians, in Amman, Jordan. Latent profile analyses of 22 belief items yielded 4 profiles of youth. The normative profile (67% of the sample, n = 585) most strongly endorsed parental authority legitimacy for prudential (risky) items, followed by moral, conventional, and then friendship items, with legitimacy lowest for personal items. The low-normative profile (10%, n = 85) followed a similar pattern, although legitimacy ratings were significantly lower than normative youth for most items, but not the personal ones. Rebellious youth (11%, n = 96) held deviant peer values; they endorsed less legitimacy, particularly for prudential and friendship items, than did youth in other profiles. Mixed youth (12%, n = 101) were similar to rebellious youth in some judgments and ryouth in others. Profile membership did not differ by adolescents' age or parental socioeconomic status but did differ by gender and national background. Youth fitting the normative (and to some extent, the low-normative) profile rated parents higher in support, behavioral control, and knowledge of adolescents' activities and lower in psychological control-disrespect and harsh punishment than did rebellious or mixed youth. Normative (and also, but less consistently, low-normative) youth reported better psychosocial adjustment across multiple measures than did rebellious and mixed youth. (PsycINFO Database Record