Navigating sociocultural elements: Acculturation and physical activity of immigrant women.

Navigating sociocultural elements: Acculturation and physical activity of immigrant women

Ethnic Identity in Acculturation Research A Study of Multiple Identities of Jewish Refugees From the Former Soviet Union

This study explored the salience and predictive value of the identity dimension of acculturation among 351 Jewish refugees from the former Soviet Union in the United States. Whereas bidirectional acculturation models consider only two identities—ethnic identification with the culture of origin (Russian) and identification as a member of one’s new society (American)—this study broadens the examination of identity to include a third component—Jewish identity. Jewish identity was found to be the most salient of the three but predicted only one of the aspects of psychological adjustment—alienation. Findings underscore the need for the acculturation field to incorporate the possibility of more than two cultures into the explanatory framework and to examine the extent to which ethnocultural identities are contextually bound

Multiple identities of Jewish immigrant adolescents from the former Soviet Union: An exploration of salience and impact of ethnic identity

The current paper explores the salience and impact of ethnic and national identities for immigrants that are negotiating more than two cultures. Specifically, we were interested in the ways in which Jewish immigrant adolescents from the former Soviet Union integrate their Russian, Jewish, and American identities, and to what extent identification with these three cultures predicts adaptation to varied life domains. In order to examine whether being Jewish has an impact on salience and predictive value of Russian and American identities, a sample of Jewish adolescents (n = 100) was compared with a sample of non-Jewish (n = 113) adolescent immigrants from the former Soviet Union. The study suggests that Jewish and non-Jewish adolescent immigrants differ in levels of Russian and American identity. Further, using structural equation modeling a bicultural model for Jewish and non-Jewish adolescents was tested. The results suggest that these two groups do not differ with respect to how Russian and American identities impact on adjustment. However, adding Jewish identity to the model for the Jewish sample significantly improved model fit, and rendered some of the impact of Russian identity non-significant. Thus a multicultural model that included all three identities had better explanatory power for this sample than a bicultural one. Implications for the study of ethnic identity of immigrants, particularly those whose lives involve multiple cultural affiliations, are drawn

Adherence across behavioral domains in treatment promoting smoking cessation plus weight control

The authors tested whether adherence to simultaneous health behavior changes was unitary or domain specific among 76 women who modified smoking, eating, and physical activity to accomplish smoking cessation plus weight control. Random-effects regression analyses showed that adherence to both smoking and diet plans declined linearly and covaried positively; their association tended to grow stronger over time. In contrast, physical activity plan adherence did not change over time and was unrelated to other domains. At the end of treatment, 65%, 30.5%, and 25% adhered well or excellently to smoking, diet, and activity treatments, respectively. Findings support both unitary and domain-specific aspects of adherence and suggest that among smokers, smoking and eating behaviors may have similarities unshared by physical activity