Assessment of Acculturation: Issues and Overview of Measures

Publicly available acculturation measures are systematically reviewed based on three criteria: scale descriptors (name of the scale, authors, year, target group, age group, subscales, and number of items), psychometric properties (reliabilities) and conceptual and theoretical structure (acculturation conditions, acculturation orientations, acculturation outcomes, acculturation attitudes, acculturation behaviors, conceptual model and life domains). Majority of the reviewed acculturation measures are short, single-scale instruments that are directed to specific target groups. Additionally, they mainly assess behavioral acculturation outcomes than acculturation conditions and orientations. Regarding the psychometric properties; most measures have an adequate internal consistency; yet cross-cultural validity of the instruments have not been reported. Guidelines for choosing or developing acculturation instruments are provided in the chapter

Perceived antecedents of marital satisfaction among Turkish, Turkish-Dutch, and Dutch couples

We studied mainstream couples in The Netherlands and Turkey as well as Turkish-Dutch immigrant couples to address cultural factors associated with marital satisfaction. A total of 13 Turkish (mainstream couples living in Turkey), 19 Turkish-Dutch (Turkish immigrant couples living in The Netherlands), and 17 Dutch (mainstream couples living in The Netherlands) married dyads (total of 98 individuals) were independently interviewed about positive and negative characteristics of marriages, determinants of general marital satisfaction and dissatisfaction, spousal communication, marital conflict, and marital roles. Multivariate tests revealed ethnic group differences on all marriage-related domains except the conflict resolution strategies. However, univariate analyses showed differences in few themes within domains; main differences were assessed between the Turkish/Turkish-Dutch (who put more emphasis on children and economical aspects) and Dutch couples (who put more emphasis on behavior, and personality of the spouse, reciprocity, emotional sharing, and psychological roles). Turkish-Dutch couples were more similar to Turkish than to Dutch couples. Results were discussed in light of the socioeconomic development and cultural value theories, which are believed to provide a useful framework for understanding the role of culture in marital satisfaction

Assessment of acculturation

Introduction Methodological issues are important in acculturation research. The quality of inferences based on our studies can be bolstered by using adequate, up-to-date methods. The present chapter deals with two methodological issues: the design of acculturation studies and procedures to assess acculturation. A leading theme of this chapter is that a careful choice of methodological aspects of a study, such as study and instrument design, can go a long way to enhancing the quality of acculturation studies. Both the design and assessment issues are core topics in cross-cultural psychology. However, we do not discuss this more general methodological literature or specific assessment instruments here. These issues are addressed elsewhere: for the design of cross-cultural studies, see Van de Vijver (2015) and Van de Vijver and Leung (1997); for test adaptations and translations, see Hambleton, Merenda, and Spielberger (2005); for the increasingly popular combination of qualitative and quantitative procedures, known as mixed methods, see Tashakkori and Teddlie, (2003); for overviews of acculturation measures, see Berry, Trimble, and Olmedo (1986), Celenk and Van de Vijver (2011, 2014), Matsudaira (2006), and Rudmin (2009). In the last 30 years, acculturation research has diversified. The prototypical acculturation study examined a single ethnic group that had moved to another country. This type of study is nowadays only one of the many kinds reported in the literature. As noted in Chapter 2, the diversification of the field has added to the complexity of the issues to be addressed in the field. For example, the terms that were used previously have become less adequate; hence we provide here a note on the terminology to clarify our use of terms (see Figure 2.2 for a description of the various kinds of acculturating groups). First, the term mainstream culture refers to the culture of the dominant group(s) in a society. In one kind of society, there is clearly one such group (e.g., Germans in Germany). In many other countries the context of acculturation may be ethnically diverse (e.g., in societies where many groups have come to live together, labeled super-diversity; Vertovec, 2007); an example is London, which used the slogan the “world in one city” in the 2012 Olympics bid to indicate that every nation of the world is represented in the population of London

Measurement Invariance of the Brief Multidimensional Student’s Life Satisfaction Scale Among Adolescents and Emerging Adults Across 23 Cultural Contexts

There is hardly any cross-cultural research on the measurement invariance of the Brief Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scales (BMSLSS). The current article evaluates the measurement invariance of the BMSLSS across cultural contexts. This cross-sectional study sampled 7,739 adolescents and emerging adults in 23 countries. A multi-group confirmatory factor analysis showed a good fit of configural and partial measurement weights invariance models, indicating similar patterns and strengths in factor loading for both adolescents and emerging adults across various countries. We found insufficient evidence for scalar invariance in both the adolescents’ and the emerging adults’ samples. A multi-level confirmatory factor analysis indicated configural invariance of the structure at country and individual level. Internal consistency, evaluated by alpha and omega coefficients per country, yielded acceptable results. The translated BMSLSS across different cultural contexts presents good psychometric characteristics similar to what has been reported in the original scale, though scalar invariance remains problematic. Our results indicate that the BMSLSS forms a brief measure of life satisfaction, which has accrued substantial evidence of construct validity, thus suitable for use in cross-cultural surveys with adolescents and emerging adults, although evaluation of degree of invariance must be carried out to ensure its suitability for mean comparisons