Please cite this article in press as: Patel, S. G., et al. War-exposed newcomer adolescent immigrants facing daily life stressors in the United States. International Journal of Intercultural Relations (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2017.03.002 ARTICLE IN PRESS G Model IJIR-1242; No. of Pages 12 International Journal of Intercultural Relations xxx (2017) xxx–xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect International Journal of Intercultural Relations journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijintrel War-exposed newcomer adolescent immigrants facing daily life stressors in the United States Sita G. Patel a,* , Anna H. Staudenmeyer a , Robert Wickham a , William M. Firmender a , Laurie Fields b , Alisa B. Miller c,d a Palo Alto University, 1791 Arastradero Road, Palo Alto, CA 94301, United States b University of California, San Francisco, United States c Boston Children’s Hospital, 300 Longwood Ave., Mail Stop BCH 3199, Boston, MA 02115, United States d Harvard Medical School, United States a r t i c l e i n f o Available online xxx Keywords: Youth Acculturative stress War exposure Academic achievement Resiliency Immigrant/refugee experience a b s t r a c t For adolescents new to the United States, the experience of war and acculturative stressors may play complex roles during early stages of adjustment to a new culture and country. The overall purpose of this study was to deepen understanding of the experiences of adoles- cents who are new to the United States, also called “newcomers”, through the examination of pre-migration war exposure and post-migration acculturative stressors as predictors of psychosocial adjustment and academic achievement. The study sample included new- comer immigrant and refugee youth (N = 184) with an average of 3.5 years in the United States. Triangulated data were collected from youth, teachers, and official school records. Results indicated that the participants who were exposed to war (N = 57) experienced more self-reported and teacher-reported anxiety, more self-reported conduct problems, and had lower academic achievement than participants who had not been exposed to war. Accul- turative stressors also predicted more self-reported anxiety, conduct problems, and lower academic achievement, but only for those adolescents without war exposure, suggesting that exposure to traumatic events like war may change newcomer adolescents’ response to acculturative stressors. This may be related to the development of coping or growth that follows after trauma, which enable youth to navigate other life challenges. Under- standing potential risk and resilience associated with war exposure among newly arrived students can assist clinicians, educators, and researchers in creating solutions to difficulties in psychosocial adjustment and academic performance. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Introduction The focus of this paper is on how war exposure and acculturative stressors impact psychosocial adjustment among new- comer immigrant adolescents living in the United States. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) almost 65.3 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide as a result of persecution, conflict, generalized vio- lence, or human rights violations by the end of 2015 (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees [UNHCR], 2016). * Corresponding author at: Pacific Graduate School of Psychology, Palo Alto University, Palo Alto, CA 94304, United States. E-mail addresses: spatel@paloaltou.edu (S.G. Patel), astaudenmeyer@paloaltou.edu (A.H. Staudenmeyer), rwickham@paloaltou.edu (R. Wickham), wfirmender@paloaltou.edu (W.M. Firmender), laurie.fields@ucsf.edu (L. Fields), alisa.miller@childrens.harvard.edu (A.B. Miller). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2017.03.002 0147-1767/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.