| Low-income Latino parents face many barriers to care when attempting to access health care services for their children. This study investigated the relationship between psychosocial variables that may be potential cultural barriers to care, such as parent health locus of control, health beliefs, self-efficacy, and acculturation, and health care utilization by low-income Latino and non-Latino parents of school age children. Participants completed several measures related to these variables. Regression analyses were performed to evaluate whether rates of health care utilization can be predicted from these psychosocial variables. Group differences were assessed using ANCOVA and MANCOVA procedures. In general, results indicated that the psychosocial variables did not predict rates of health care utilization among low-income parents, although self-efficacy accounted for a small amount (8.6%) of the variance in rates of health care use among non-Latino White parents. Results also indicated that Latino parents had greater rates of health care utilization than non-Latino White parents, a trend which contradicts the findings of previous research studies. As expected, Latino parents were found to be less acculturated and endorsed more culturally-based causal attributions for illness than non-Latino White parents. Limitations of the study and implications for future research are discussed. |
