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Article Excerpt
The structure and measurement of acculturation/enculturation was investigated on 2 Asian American samples. Factor analyses revealed similar 2-factor structures for both acculturation and enculturation. The factor-analytic-derived measure yielded scores with adequate reliability and marginal construct validity. Acculturation/enculturation differences by generation status, gender, and country region were also detected.
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Over the past decade, there has been increased research on the relevance of acculturation/enculturation to psychosocial development, physical and mental health, and service utilization (Berry, 1994; Kim & Atkinson, 2002; LaFromboise, Coleman, & Gerton, 1993; S. K. Lee, Sobal, & Frongillo, 2003). However, one of the persistent problems in this line of research has been how to best conceptualize and measure acculturation and enculturation for specific racial and ethnic groups (Kim & Abreu, 2001). In this article, we address conceptual and measurement issues related to acculturation/enculturation and describe two studies related to the validation of an existent acculturation measure for use with Asian American college student populations.
From a psychology standpoint, acculturation has long been conceptualized as the process by which individuals experience changes in their cultural values, behaviors, and cognitions when they come into continuous, firsthand contact with another cultural group, typically the dominant host culture (Graves, 1967). In the past, these changes were believed to occur in a unidimensional direction. That is, acculturation implied that individuals replaced the characteristics of their native culture with the characteristics of the dominant host culture. Gordon (1964) described this replacement process as a form of cultural assimilation that helped immigrants more readily adapt to and fit into their new host environments.
In recent years, this unidimensional model of acculturation has been criticized and challenged by social scientists, because the model is based on a flawed assumption that individuals cannot orient to more than one culture. It also privileges the notion of assimilation and implies deficiencies within the native culture. Research, however, finds that individuals are able to retain their native cultural characteristics while concurrently acquiring the characteristics of the dominant host culture (Berry, 1994; LaFromboise et al., 1993). That is, individuals are able to competently function in multiple cultural environments without necessarily experiencing feelings of marginalization (cf. Park, 1928; Stonequist, 1937).
The retention of the native culture (or acquisition thereof for U.S.-born children of immigrants) is commonly referred to as enculturation (Cortes, Rogler, & Malgady, 1994). Enculturation is believed to operate relatively independent of acculturation, although society may exert pressures toward assimilation and the relinquishment of one's ethnic culture and heritage (e.g., the English Only Movement). Acculturation and enculturation are now conceptualized more accurately as bidimensional or bicultural constructs. We are also aware that some individuals who have been exposed to multiple cultural contexts may develop a multidimensional cultural orientation (e.g., a Soviet Jewish refugee living in the United States).
In addition to being conceived as bidimensional (or multidimensional), acculturation and enculturation (hereafter referred to as acculturation/enculturation) occurs across multiple life domains and varies according to these domains. Researchers have focused primarily on behavioral changes in individuals to account for rates of acculturation and enculturation (e.g., language usage, food preferences, friendship patterns, and lifestyle choices). But, recently, researchers have expanded the operational definition of acculturation/enculturation to include other life domains, such as values, emotions, identity, and attitudes (Cuellar, Arnold, & Maldonado, 1995; Kim & Abreu, 2001). Acculturation may occur more rapidly in some of these domains (e.g., language usage, food preferences) than in other domains (e.g., social interactions, values). Kim, Atkinson, and Yang (1999), for example, found that immigrant and U.S.-born Asian Americans were likely to acculturate at a faster rate in terms of adopting new behaviors than adopting the values of the host culture. It is believed that acculturation/enculturation in these life domains will differentially affect psychosocial development, physical and mental health, and service utilization.
The process of acculturation/enculturation is also believed to vary by cultural socialization experiences, life circumstances, and social contexts (Portes & Zhou, 1993). Tsai, Ying, and Lee (2000), for instance, have contended that immigrant Asian Americans are more likely to experience a unidimensional acculturation/enculturation process than U.S.-born Asian Americans whose acculturation/enculturation experiences are more likely to be bidimensional or bicultural. Immigrants who live in ethnically and racially diverse communities or regions of the country are also likely to acculturate/enculturate at different rates than those living in predominantly White communities and regions (Portes & Zhou, 1993). These examples demonstrate some of the ways in which acculturation/enculturation may manifest itself across groups and contexts.
Although acculturation/enculturation is best defined as a bidimensional process that varies by life domain and according to life experiences, circumstances, and social contexts, most researchers have overlooked these different aspects of acculturation/enculturation by using unidimensional measures of acculturation that do not account for such variations. For example, the Suinn-Lew Asian Self-Identity Acculturation Scale (SL-ASIA; Suinn, Rickard-Figueroa, Lew, & Vigil, 1987) continues to be the most commonly used assessment method of acculturation for Asian Americans (Abe-Kim, Okazaki, & Goto, 2001). However, the scale fails to adequately account for the bidimensional or bicultural aspect of acculturation/enculturation and, moreover, its psychometric properties (e.g., underlying factor structure) have not been sufficiently confirmed (Kim & Abreu, 2001).
Other measures of acculturation/enculturation specific to Asian American populations have been developed in recent years to fill this measurement gap, such as the Asian Values Scale (Kim et al., 1999), the European American Values Scale for Asian Americans (Wolfe, Yang, Wong, & Atkinson, 2001), and the Vancouver Index of Acculturation (Ryder, Alden, & Paulhus, 2000). Among these newer measures, the General Ethnicity Questionnaire (GEQ; Tsai et al., 2000) and the Asian American Multidimensional Acculturation Scale (AAMAS; Chung, Kim, & Abreu, 2004) best advance the measurement of acculturation/enculturation. The GEQ was developed initially for Chinese Americans and assesses acculturation and enculturation across multiple life domains. Although the GEQ has since been used in other studies (e.g., Tsai, Ying, & Lee, 2001), it conflates notions of nationality and race by defining the referent group for acculturation as American instead of White. The AAMAS, which was developed at the same time as the current study, assesses acculturation, enculturation, and panethnic identification across multiple life domains for Asian Americans as a general population. The AAMAS appears to be a promising measure of acculturation/enculturation, but further research is necessary.
Despite these recent measurement advances, there is a need to continue studying the structure and measurement of acculturation/enculturation for Asian Americans that accounts for the bidimensional nature of acculturation and enculturation and its occurrence in multiple life domains. We elected to modify and evaluate an existent self-report measure of acculturation/enculturation that was originally designed for another immigrant population in which English is a second language. The Acculturation Rating Scale for Mexican Americans-II (ARSMA-II; Cuellar et al., 1995) is a bidimensional behavioral scale developed to measure independently an individual's cultural orientation toward Mexican culture and Anglo culture. It specifically measures acculturation (Anglo orientation) and enculturation (Mexican orientation) in the life domains of language usage, cultural activities involving language, ethnic identity,...
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