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Article Excerpt
The 36-item Asian Values Scale (B. S. K. Kim, D. R. Atkinson, & P. H. Yang, 1999) was revised on the basis of G. Rasch's (1960) model and data from 618 Asian Americans. The results led to the establishment of a 25-item measure named the Asian Values Scale-Revised.
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Asian Americans represent one of the fastest growing and highly diverse ethnic groups in the United States (U.S.Bureau of the Census, 2002). Between 1980 and 1990, the number of Asian Americans in the United States doubled, mainly as a result of the Immigration Act of 1965 and the U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia. As of 2000, there were nearly 12 million Asian Americans, representing an increase of 72% since 1990 and a figure of 4.2% of the current U.S. population (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2002). It has been projected that by 2050 approximately 1 out of 10 Americans will have an Asian ancestry (U.S.Bureau of the Census, 1992). In terms of diversity within the Asian American group, the U.S. Bureau of the Census (2002) has identified no less than 24 different ethnic groups, including Asian Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Korean, Laotian, and Vietnamese. Each of these groups has its own unique language, immigration history, traditions, and customs.
As a result of these growing numbers and the recognition of the high degree of within-group variability, scholars have focused on identifying psychological constructs that are salient to the experiences of Asian Americans. These efforts have led to the concept of enculturation. First defined and used by Herskovits (1948), enculturation refers to the process of socialization to the norms of one's indigenous culture, including the values, ideas, and concepts that are salient for the culture (Berry, Poortinga, Segall, & Dasen, 1992; Segall, Dasen, Berry, & Poortinga, 1990). Recently, enculturation was defined as the process of retaining one's indigenous cultural values, behaviors, knowledge, and identity (Kim & Abreu, 2001; Kim, Atkinson, & Umemoto, 2001). In particular, Kim, Atkinson, et al. (2001) noted that an important dimension of enculturation for Asian Americans is adherence to Asian cultural values; cultural values refer to "universalistic statements about what we think are desirable or attractive" (P. B. Smith & Bond, 1994, p. 52). Asian cultural values that are salient for Asian Americans include collectivism, conformity to norms, deference to authority figures, emotional restraint, filial piety, hierarchical family structure, and humility (Kim, Atkinson, & Yang, 1999; Sue & Sue, 1999). Current theories on Asian cultural values suggest that first-generation Asian Americans adhere to these values more strongly than Asian Americans who are many generations removed from immigration (Kim, Atkinson, et al., 2001). In addition, the theories suggest that adherence to these values influences the ways in which individuals manifest psychological problems, people's beliefs about problem etiology, people's help-seeking behaviors, and the ways in which individuals express their emotions (Atkinson, Morten, & Sue, 1998; Sue & Sue, 1999).
To empirically examine the construct of Asian cultural values and its relationships to other psychological concepts, Kim et al. (1999) developed the Asian Values Scale (AVS). The AVS contains 36 items and uses a 7-point Likert-type scale (1 = strongly disagree, 2 = moderately disagree, 3 = mildly disagree, 4 = neither agree nor disagree, 5 = mildly agree, 6 = moderately agree, and 7 = strongly agree). Example items are (a) "One should be discouraged from talking about one's accomplishments," (b) "The worst thing one can do is to bring disgrace to one's family reputation," (c) "One should consider the needs of others before considering one's own needs," (d) "One should be humble and modest," and (e) "One need not be able to resolve psychological problems on one's own" (reverse worded). For the 36-item scale's score, Kim et al. (1999) reported coefficient alphas of .81 and .82 and a 2-week test-retest reliability coefficient of .83. Support for the AVS score's construct validity was obtained by identifying, via a nationwide survey and focus-group discussions, items that reflect cultural values commonly observed across various Asian American ethnic groups; items were retained that were more highly endorsed by first-generation Asian Americans than by European Americans. Evidence of the AVS score's concurrent validity was obtained through a confirmatory factor analysis, in which a factor structure comprising the AVS, the Individualism-Collectivism Scale (Triandis, 1995), and the Suinn-Lew Asian Self-Identity Acculturation Scale (SL-ASIA; Suinn, Rickard-Figueroa, Lew, & Vigil, 1987) was confirmed. Discriminant validity was evidenced in the low correlation between the AVS scores, which reflect values enculturation, and the SL-ASIA scores, which reflect predominantly behavioral acculturation.
The AVS has been used in a number of research studies, mostly in the field of counseling process and outcome. In particular, two studies have examined the effects of client adherence to Asian cultural values on single-session outcome with Asian American college student clients. Kim and Atkinson (2002) found that when counselors were Asian American, the clients who had high scores on the AVS rated the counselors as more empathic and credible than did the clients with low AVS scores. In contrast, when the counselors were European American, the clients with low AVS scores rated the counselors as more empathic than did the clients with high AVS scores. However, in another study of single-session counseling, Kim, Li, and Liang (2002), using all European American counselors, found that Asian American clients with high scores on the AVS perceived greater counselor empathy and working alliances than did clients with low AVS scores. This latter finding is directly contradictory to the findings from Kim and Atkinson's (2002) sample with European American counselors. It is difficult to make sense of the inconsistent findings regarding values adherence and differences in counselor ethnicity, because there may be many alternative explanations for these findings (e.g., presence of moderator variables). However, one possibility is that the inconsistent results might reflect some psychometric limitation with the AVS in its assessment of adherence to cultural values.
Although the AVS score has evidence of reliability and validity on the basis of classical test theory, each of the 36 items has not been subjected to a more rigorous examination. Because the items were chosen simply on the basis of t tests of group-level scores between first-generation Asian Americans and general European...
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