Eating Attitudes of Native American and African American Women: Differences by Race and Acculturation

Thirty-tour Native American and twenty-eight African American women responded to eating disorders and acculturation measures. African Americans appeared to have greater concern about their body weight and shape than Native Americans. Among all, those who were more acculturated to the U.S. white culture reported more concerns than those who were less acculturated. Also, normal weight women tended to have higher anorexia scores than overweight women as well as a diagnosed anorexic group. Open-ended questions elicited feelings about U.S. symbols of beauty, one\u27s physical self, and usage of standard English. The conceptualization of acculturation to white society and acculturative stress is used to understand the study

An exploratory study of cross-cultural adaptation of adolescent Taiwanese unaccompanied sojourners in Canada

Increasing accessibility and the demand for international education globally has engendered a new wave of international students of diverse demographic backgrounds and developmental characteristics. The appeal of studying in western, English-speaking countries is strong even among very young adolescents from East Asia. However, existing literature on international students has largely overlooked this younger sojourner population. Thus, little is currently known about the effects of developmental and cultural factors on the cross-cultural adaptation of these teenage international students. In this exploratory study, the psychological well-being and adaptation of adolescent Taiwanese unaccompanied sojourners (N=201) attending secondary schools in a large Canadian city were examined. The study first investigated the participants’ perceived preparedness for studying in Canada. A significant number of these students reported feeling ill-prepared and poorly oriented upon their arrival in Canada, as well as suffering from a lack of information about their host country and their purpose for sojourning. The study then tested a path model of adaptation based on six variables emerged from a quantitative survey and conceptualized within the acculturation and ethnic identity frameworks. The four predictors were perceived prejudice, education-related acculturation, interpersonal competence, and age of arrival; the two criterion variables were acculturative stress and ethnic identity. In the best-fitting model, education-related acculturation reduced acculturative stress while perceived prejudice contributed to such stress. However, the predictor variables’ relationships with the criterion variables were mediated by interpersonal competence. Implications for future research, counseling, and cross-cultural training with teenage sojourners are discussed

Preface

Preface This work evolved from the 1993 Buros-Nebraska Symposium on Testing and Measurement: Multicultural Assessment, held by the Buros Institute of Mental Measurements, Department of Educational Psychology, at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Among the symposium presenters, Stanley Sue, Juris Draguns, Guiseppe Costantino and Thomas Malgady, Janet Helms, Robert Carter, Sandra Choney and John Behrens, Joseph Ponterotto, Gargi Roysircar Sodowsky, and Donald Pope-Davis accepted the Buros Institute\u27s invitation to contribute chapters to an envisioned multicultural assessment volume. The authorssome with the assistance of new collaborators-painstakingly revised their papers. They added measurement and statistical analyses that they have not previously published, advanced the theory-building of their respective topics, and wrote integrative literature reviews, thus providing substantive chapters for this book. With reference to the few multicultural and cross-cultural assessment books, book chapters, and journal reviews that are currently available in professional psychology, this book is an essential complement to them. Its uniqueness is that it responds to the paucity of measurement research in multicultural counseling. This collection might be characterized as recording multicultural assessment\u27s empirical beginnings, a fairly unchartered territory. Select multicultural instruments that are paper-and-pencil attitude and projective tests, developed recently and cited in refereed journals, are presented. New data are treated to multivariate statistics, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, structural equation modeling, cluster analyses, reliability estimation, and norm transformations. Tests are shown to be construct-related to multicultural theories and/ or criterion- related to sociocultural variables. That is, instrument validity is supported through the theoretical groundedness of obtained results, through theory-building based on data interpretation, or through criterion predictions. Test bias of mainstream instruments are discussed statistically as well as conceptually. Differences in test scores are given an interpretation different from the conclusion that deviant scores indicate deficits. Clinical judgement is shown to be subject to individual bias and to clinicians\u27 immersion in their racial and cultural contexts and their inability to see their imposed bias. Decision trees, guidelines, and assessment reports are provided to illustrate qualitative methods for contextual diagnosis and integrative clinical judgement. Methods to identify social desirability in multicultural self-reports are discussed. Classical measurement theory is argued to overlook the multiplicity of person-environment reactivity that merits investigation in a multicultural society and in a majority-minority sociopolitical system

Epilogue

The book has shown the use of a combination of approaches to understand the nature of a problem: traditional diagnosis and standardized assessment, cultural and racial explanations as alternative hypotheses, clinical judgement based on a decision-tree involving cross-cultural and indigenous frameworks, quantitative-qualitative methods of data analyses, and the use of multicultural paper-and pencil and projective tests. The attitudes and cognitive-affective tests presented or referenced in the book, in addition to being formally administered, could be used as springboards for collaborative discussions with clients and psychology trainees in order to gain a better understanding of their values and assumptions and, by inference, their modes of problem-solving in a multicultural society. We look forward to these new instruments\u27 future refinements, psychometric enhancements, and diverse sampling of subjects. The measurement of acculturation attitudes is important in counseling and clinical psychology. Its importance to applications has been affirmed by the 1994 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), and the 1993 APA Guidelines for Service Providers to Ethnic, Linguistic, and Culturally Diverse Populations, the latter stating that psychologists must document culturally relevant factors in client records, including number of generations in the country, number of years in the country, fluency in English, community resources, level of education, and level of stress related to acculturation. Because a multicultural book is incomplete without addressing issues of acculturation, Appendices A and B provide measurement and research information on acculturation scales. Appendix A summarizes select psychometric properties of and predictions for frequently referenced acculturation scales developed for Hispanic/Latino and Asian groups in the U.S. Appendix B summarizes select counseling psychology studies showing the effects of acculturation on client reactions. At the end of each Appendix is a reference list of the authors of the instruments and related research studies. We hope this work, Multicultural Measurement in Counseling and Clinical Psychology, will add to the long and colorful history of psychological assessment

Development of the Cross-Cultural Coping Scale: Collective, Avoidance, and Engagement strategies

The Cross-Cultural Coping Scale, a scenario-based instrument, was developed in 3 studies. Exploratory factor analyses with Chinese Canadian adolescents (N = 506) showed a 3-factor structure: Collective, Avoidance, and Engagement Coping. The model was reproduced very well in a confirmatory factor analysis. Participant acculturation, self-construals, and religious affiliations were related to coping dimensions

Predictors of acculturation for Chinese adolescents in Canada: Age of arrival, length of stay, social class, and English reading ability

In a sample of 506 Chinese adolescents living in Canada from 3 cohort groups, age at the time of arrival in Canada, length of stay in Canada, socioeconomic status, and English reading ability predicted acculturation. English reading ability and socioeconomic status predicted acculturative stress. There were within-group cohort differences in acculturation characteristics. Implications for counseling are addressed

Liberation-focused Community Outreach: A Qualitative Exploration of Peer Group Supervision during Disaster Response

While it is clear that community outreach and disaster response must include cultural and social justice competence, there is a dearth of knowledge regarding the process by which this can occur. Guided by liberation psychology, this qualitative study examined the peer group supervision process of psychologists and counselors providing outreach to Haitian communities in Florida after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. The findings suggest that peer supervision generated a cyclical process in which the practitioners focused on both content and process themes that were salient to the community outreach. During supervision, practitioners used content information on the community\u27s culture, strengths, and sociopolitical issues to conceptualize the community\u27s experiences and needs. This content informed the outreach process, including the practitioners’ roles and the ways in which they connected and developed respectful relationships with the community. Ongoing peer supervision appeared to facilitate a liberation-focused community outreach and increase consciousness among the practitioners

Exploring the experiences and coping strategies of international medical students

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Few studies have addressed the challenges that international medical students face and there is a dearth of information on the behavioural strategies these students adopt to successfully progress through their academic program in the face of substantial difficulties of language barrier, curriculum overload, financial constraints and assessment tasks that require high proficiency in communication skills.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>This study was designed primarily with the aim of enhancing understanding of the coping strategies, skill perceptions and knowledge of assessment expectations of international students as they progress through the third and fourth years of their medical degree at the School of Medicine, University of Tasmania, Australia.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Survey, focus group discussion and individual interviews revealed that language barriers, communication skills, cultural differences, financial burdens, heavy workloads and discriminatory bottlenecks were key factors that hindered their adaptation to the Australian culture. Quantitative analyses of their examination results showed that there were highly significant (p < 0.001) variations between student performances in multiple choice questions, short answer questions and objective structured clinical examinations (70.3%, 49.7% & 61.7% respectively), indicating existence of communication issues.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Despite the challenges, these students have adopted commendable coping strategies and progressed through the course largely due to their high sense of responsibility towards their family, their focus on the goal of graduating as medical doctors and their support networks. It was concluded that faculty needs to provide both academic and moral support to their international medical students at three major intervention points, namely point of entry, mid way through the course and at the end of the course to enhance their coping skills and academic progression. Finally, appropriate recommendations were made.</p

Section One: Test Bias, Multicultural Assessment Theory, and Multicultural Instrumentation

Stanley Sue in Measurement, Testing, and Ethnic Bias: Can Solutions Be Found addresses multicultural assessment and research with experienced wisdom and scientific inquiry. His tone is amicable, communicating a problem-solving attitude. Owing to its applicability, Sue\u27s paper will appeal to a wide readership, with each reader finding a particular part especially meaningful. We find journalistic information on negligent diagnosis; a review of diagnostic studies; suggestions for new measurement methods to control for cultural bias in tests; analyses of a White prediction equation for the academic achievement of various Asians in the U.s.A.; ongoing research on MPPI-2 scores of diversely acculturated Asian Americans; hypotheses about Asian-American personality variables that influence responses to mainstream measures of psychopathology; and a discussion on institutional policy matters, something practitioners are rarely concerned about, but which is important to the advocacy of racial and ethnic equity. One is introduced to what is minority group status, culture, ethnicity, and the overlap of the latter two. Sue cites research where substantial misdiagnosis of American ethnic minorities consists of both over- and underpathologizing, and where misdiagnosis may have resulted from the interaction of client-clinician racial! ethnic match and mismatch. The main point is that American ethnics are more likely to be misdiagnosed than White Americans. Sue notes that the two popular ways of identifying test bias in personality instruments are factor analysis and regression analysis (analysis of items within an instrument has been used particularly in achievement and aptitude tests [Sue, 1994, private communication]). Sue addresses the nature and extent of bias when one group\u27s regression equation is used as the standard. He summarizes a previous study that reports predictors of Asian academic achievement. A White regression equation both overpredicted and underpredicted various Asian groups. Sue and colleagues used Whites as the standard because prediction formulas established by universities are based primarily on the White-American majority group. Sue emphasizes (1994, private communication) that over and underpredictions of CPA involving a difference of .17 is quite substantial, not only to student perceptions but also to admissions to graduate school. As one example, UCLA will not as a rule admit as graduate students undergraduates who have a cumula tive CPA of under 3.00. You can imagine how many students receive CP As between 2.83 and 3.00 .... Finally, at some universities (such as UC Berkeley), there were attempts to increase the weight of SAT-Verbal over SAT-Math performance in admission. According to our findings, doing so would probably reduce the ability to identify the best Asian American students

Section Two: New Developments in the Theories and Measurement of White and Black Racial Attitudes

Janet Helms in Toward a Methodology for Measuring and Assessing Racial as Distinguished from Ethnic Identity proposes (a) theoretical advancements in the Black and White racial identity models, (b) a nontraditional psychometric understanding of the White Racial Identity Attitudes Scale (WRIAS), and (c) assumptive differences in the constructs of racial identity and ethnic identity. Helms has introduced new concepts, such as, sociorace, racial assignment, societally defined racial classification system and societally regulated racial group, to argue that one cannot classify people in the U.S. according to genetic origins and phenotypes. Rather, race-defining characteristics are chosen by the White dominant group, the group that holds the political power. Thus, race is sociopolitically defined, and racial identity of an individual is the internalized consequence of imposed societal categories. Originally Helms had conceptualized racial identity as a linear, hierarchical developmental process. She used the construct of stages to describe the respective processes of U.S. Blacks and Whites who progress from negative and hateful attitudes to positive and healthy attitudes towards both the Black and the White racial groups. Helms has now suggested that ego statuses be used instead of stages when understanding a person\u27s racial self-conception. An intrapsychic status process is caused by a person-environment reactivity. But statuses\u27 are hypothetical constructs, which cannot be measured. What can be measured is the individual\u27s information processing strategy, as related to one\u27s currently predominant status. However, different information-processing strategies may underlie each status. Thus, two individuals governed by the same status may actually express themselves through different information-processing strategies (for example, in the Black Preencounter status, denial by one and individualism in another). One cannot conclude that any single sample of race-related behavior, as indicated by scale responses, reveals all of the statuses that are potentially accessible to a person. That is, because a status has differentiated to some extent in the person\u27s ego does not mean it will govern all of the person\u27s responses on a measure. Helms uses a circular diagram to represent the status profile of a person. The circle is used to emphasize that racial identity statuses are not hierarchical, in the sense that the use of one status does not preclude the use of another. These ideographic and dynamic aspects of racial identity have challenged Helms to rethink how to use her objective, Likert-type scales. Helms argues that the basic tenets of classical measurement theory (e.g., items need to be linearly related as in the case of internal consistency reliability) are probably not directly applicable to the measurement of racial identity statuses. Helms says that relationships among items may be underrepresented if one uses unadjusted linear methodologies to evaluate such relationships