Acculturation, the extent to which immigrants adapt to their new culture, can cause stresses for those in the U.S. from different cultures or those who are born to parents from other countries, and teen-agers under such stresses may become involved in risky behaviors such as smoking. Measuring acculturation is important to understanding stresses and the risky behaviors associated with them, as well as eventually designing programs to reduce the health risks.
But most population surveys and related research tools are designed for adults from a single culture, so researchers from the Keck School of Medicine of USC have developed a new measure just for adolescents. They report the measure in the August issue of the Journal of Early Adolescence.
The new Acculturation, Habits, and Interests Multicultural Scale for Adolescents (AHIMSA) is brief, age-appropriate, relevant to a variety of cultures and can assess multiple components of acculturation. The study is part of a wider cross-disciplinary effort to understand and prevent health-risk behaviors among multicultural adolescents. The National Cancer Institute/National Institute on Drug Abuse Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center funded the research.
"Most research on acculturation has focused on adults, but in the U.S., and especially in Los Angeles, we have a huge population of first- and second-generation kids. They're influenced by their parents' culture, the U.S. culture and third, fourth and fifth cultures that their neighbors and friends may belong to. We thought it was important to develop an acculturation measure specifically for them," says Jennifer B. Unger, Ph.D., research assistant professor of preventive medicine and lead author.
Acculturation, the study reports, falls into four general patterns:
- Integration: the person combines aspects of the host culture with the culture of origin;
- Assimilation: the person replaces native culture with the new host culture;
- Separation: the person retains the native culture and rejects the host cultural orientation; and
- Marginalization: the person becomes alienated from both cultures.
The complex process may lead to identity confusion, stress, interpersonal conflict and, for adolescents, rebelliousness against parents who are slower to acculturate. Teens experiencing these stresses are more susceptible to behaviors such as smoking, alcohol and other drug use; violence; suicide; eating disorders; and risky sexual behavior.
The AHIMSA survey was administered to 317 sixth-grade students in English-speaking classrooms at 13 Los Angeles-area middle schools in the spring of 2000. Students had an average age of 11 1/2, and attended schools participating in a trial of smoking-prevention programs tailored to students' cultures.
The survey asked students questions to assess ethnic interaction, cultural heritage and ethnic behaviors from the perspective of an early adolescent. Students finished eight statements including: I am most comfortable being with people from _____; my favorite music is from _____; the holidays I celebrate are from _____; and the food I eat at home is from _____.
Each statement could be answered in one of four ways: the U.S. (indicating assimilation); the country my family is from (indicating separation); both (indicating integration); and neither (indicating marginalization). For all AHIMSA items, the most common responses were United States (assimilated) and both countries (integrated).
Scores also were charted according to how many generations the respondent's family had been in the U.S. The third-generation adolescents--those whose grandparents had immigrated to the U.S. and whose parents were born in the U.S.--were more likely to have a U.S. orientation (assimilation) and significantly less likely to have an orientation to both countries (integration) than the first- and second-generation adolescents.
First-generation teen-agers were more likely to be oriented toward the other country (separation) than second-generation adolescents, who, in turn, were more likely to be oriented toward the other country than third-generation adolescents. Those oriented toward neither country (marginalization) did not vary significantly by generation.
The significant associations between the AHIMSA subscales and other measures of acculturation are, according to the study, evidence for the validity of the scale.
Co-writers of the study include Peggy Gallaher, Sohaila Shakib, Anamara Ritt-Olson, Paula H. Palmer and C. Anderson Johnson.
Unger, J. B., Gallaher, P., Shakib, S., Ritt-Olson, A., Palmer, P. H. & Johnson, C. A. (2002) The AHIMSA Acculturation Scale: An New Measure of Acculturation for Adolescents in a Multicultural Society. Journal of Early Adolescence, Vol. 22, No. 3, pp. 225-251.