Annual Review of Asian American Psychology, 2015
Lisa Kiang
Wake Forest University
Charissa S. L. Cheah
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Virginia W. Huynh
California State University, Northridge
Yijie Wang
Fordham University
Hirokazu Yoshikawa
New York University
As the seventh in the series, this annual review of research on Asian American psychology focused on
the 332 articles that were identified by PsycINFO as being published in 2015 and that met the inclusion
criteria established by prior reviews. Consistent with prior annual reviews, these articles were coded for
4 domain themes: study topic, methodology, participant characteristics (i.e., ethnicity), and age range/
developmental period of the sample. In addition to presenting a brief summary of our coding results, we
also present a more detailed synthesis and evaluation of empirical work centered around the distinctive
status of Asian Americans as members of cultural, immigrant, and minority groups. Trends and patterns
in the field and concrete suggestions for future research are discussed throughout the review. A
discussion of limitations of our review is also provided.
Keywords: review, Asian Americans, research, 2015
Over the last several decades, the study of Asian Americans has
exponentially grown in both number and scope. As reported in the
inaugural annual review of research on Asian Americans for the
Asian American Journal of Psychology (AAJP; Kim, Wong, &
Maffini, 2010), there were zero PsycINFO citations using the
search term “Asian American” with a publication year before
1970. Our own PsycINFO search of peer-reviewed articles on
“Asian Americans” revealed only 45 citations from 1970 –1979
and 180 in the 1980s. Over a fourfold increase was found in the
1990s, with 817 citations from 1990 –1999. Scholarship doubled at
the turn of the century with 1,825 citations from 2000 –2009. The
number of citations found within the period of 2010 to 2016 (to
date, with a search conducted in May, 2016) has already exceeded
the prior decade with 2,063 hits.
Recognizing the need for a scholarly resource devoted to the
study of Asian Americans in the face of such growth in empirical
work, the first issue of the AAJP was introduced in 2009. Over its
short period of circulation thus far, the scholarly impact of the
AAJP has ranged from 1.39 to 1.75, which is comparable to
long-established journals such as Cultural Diversity and Ethnic
Minority Psychology (CDEMP) and Families, Systems, and Heath.
Currently, the AAJP is also ranked 4th of 15 ethnic studies cate-
gory journals (Kim, 2016). With such professional repute, the
AAJP is well-poised to provide a yearly review of the state of the
research on Asian Americans.
AAJPs tradition of annual reviews was inspired, in part, by
Leong and Okazaki’s (2009) seminal article on the history of
Asian American psychology published in CDEMP. Before the
more recent upsurge in Asian American research, reviews were
conducted about every decade. This practice seemed reasonable
because the overall scholarship targeting Asian Americans was
still relatively scarce. However, there is now great utility in not
only having a venue to disseminate annual reviews, but in also
conducting reviews more often due to the sheer amount of work
that is being produced. The overarching goal of these annual
reviews, as originally described by Kim et al. (2010), is to provide
a forum whereby theory and research can be critically summarized,
consolidated, and synthesized to guide future research, which is
especially crucial as the size of the empirical literature on Asian
Americans continually increases. The benefit of such reviews can
also be seen in their highlighting of emerging areas, limitations in
the field, and opportunities to fill literature gaps and drive new
research directions.
As members of the steering committee of the Society for Re-
search in Child Development Asian Caucus, we welcome the
Lisa Kiang, Department of Psychology, Wake Forest University; Cha-
rissa S. L. Cheah, Department of Psychology, University of Maryland,
Baltimore County; Virginia W. Huynh, Department of Child and Adoles-
cent Development, California State University, Northridge; Yijie Wang,
Department of Psychology, Fordham University; Hirokazu Yoshikawa,
Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, New
York University.
Charissa S. L. Cheah, Virginia W. Huynh, Yijie Wang, and Hirokazu
Yoshikawa participated equally in producing this introduction. Their
names are presented in alphabetical order. We thank the hard work of study
coders, Marianna Broome, Mat Jones, Megan Kessler and, especially,
Richard Davis, III.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Lisa
Kiang, Department of Psychology, Wake Forest University, PO Box 7778,
Winston-Salem, NC 27109. E-mail: kiangl@wfu.edu
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