Wider path to cultural understanding

By Beth Azar
Monitor staff

This winter, Detroit city officials removed three children from their parents' care because one of the daughters complained of abuse. Neighbors had reported overhearing loud fights, and screaming and saw one daughter run from the house with ripped clothing. But, according to a report in the Washington Post, the parents--immigrants from Iraq--said they were trying to keep their children from being corrupted by American culture: The girls wanted to wear jeans, date boys and discard the traditional Muslim head covering.

City officials are stuck between their concern for the girls' safety and claims by Arab-American groups that it's all a cultural misunderstanding.

Situations such as this demonstrate the importance of understanding the process by which immigrants adapt to the values and customs of a new country and how that process affects issues such as mental and physical health and family function.

Research over the past two decades implies that a person's level of acculturation is strongly related to these factors. However, problems with how researchers have traditionally conceptualized and measured acculturation limit these findings. In fact, a consensus is brewing among researchers that a sea change must occur in dominant theories and methodologies if they hope to gain any deep understanding of acculturation and how it impacts people's lives.

The traditional model--at least in the United States--has been linear, assuming that as people take on the values, customs and language of a new culture, they drop the values, customs and language of their old culture. In essence, this is a model of assimilation, says psychologist John Berry, PhD, an acculturation researcher at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. And the most commonly used measures of acculturation are based on this model.

But, when asked, most immigrants prefer a more multicultural model of acculturation, Berry and others find. In such a model, people may adopt values and customs of a new culture while maintaining values and customs of their old culture.

Researchers will be able to develop more realistic theories of acculturation by using this type of orthogonal model, says Eugene Oetting, PhD, of Colorado State University's Tri-ethnic Center for Prevention Research.

"No one questions that acculturation is an important construct," says University of San Francisco psychologist Gerardo Marín, PhD, co-organizer of a recent conference on acculturation partly sponsored by APA. "But if it's not conceptualized properly, the findings we're coming up with may be a lot of garbage."

Multicultural measures...

The concept of multiculturalism has gained popularity in the United States over the past decade, agree acculturation researchers. But most studies have continued to approach acculturation from a linear perspective. In part that's because many standard acculturation measures are themselves linear, says psychologist Nolan Zane, PhD, of the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Fourteen out of 18 of the most commonly used acculturation scales measure acculturation along a continuum, with culture of origin at one extreme and host culture at the other extreme, he and graduate student Winnie Mak found in a recent analysis they prepared for the acculturation conference. "This type of linear model doesn't allow for the possibility that a person might retain elements of his or her culture of origin while simultaneously learning another culture," says Zane.

In addition, each acculturation measure tends to assess only a few of many domains considered important to acculturation--all but one scale measure language, but only three assess cultural value orientation. And often the domains one measure assesses don't overlap with those of another measure, making findings from studies that use different measurement scales difficult to compare.

These issues become a problem when researchers begin to interpret the results of findings that link acculturation level to some other factor, such as drug use, says Zane. It's common to see researchers explaining findings that increased drug use is associated with increased levels of acculturation by assuming that as people acculturate they lose traditional cultural values that would normally protect against drug use. But more often than not, their acculturation measure did not assess cultural values, making their interpretation difficult to support, he says.

The construct of acculturation may be too broad, say some researchers. Instead, it might be better to measure individual aspects of acculturation, such as ethnic identity, social networks and acculturative attitude, explains Jean Phinney, PhD, of California State University.

"I try to avoid the word 'acculturation' except to refer to a general field of study," she says. "For research purposes, general definitions or general measures are not very useful."

Others still like the idea of a general measure of acculturation, but agree that they may need to supplement such measures with assessments of specific elements of acculturation.

...and models

A multidimensional model of acculturation allows a more refined analysis of people's experiences, says APA President Richard Suinn, PhD, who has modified his own well-used Asian acculturation scale to fit an orthogonal model.

Such a model allows for four types of acculturation, according to Berry:

* Assimilation--where people replace their native culture and customs with the culture and customs of mainstream society.

* Separation--where people choose not to take on the customs and culture of mainstream society and remain segregated.

* Marginalization--where people fail to fit into either their native society or mainstream society.

* Integration/biculturalism--where people maintain values and customs of their native culture and take on the values and custom of mainstream society that allow them to become full participants in society.

Most ethnic-minority populations list integration as the best option and marginalization the worst, finds Berry.

But although many researchers agree with this type of multicultural approach to acculturation, too many continue to slip back into the ease of a linear model, says psychologist Joseph Trimble, PhD, of Western Washington University.

"People talk about complexity but they are still thinking linearly and that will affect their theories and their findings," he says.

In fact, an orthogonal model allows researchers to see their data in a new light, says Oetting. For example, one of the strongest findings in "linear" research is that Hispanic women drink more alcohol as they become more linked with Anglo culture. Many studies that find this association interpret the findings to mean that women drink more as they lose their attachment to Hispanic cultural norms, which frown on alcohol use by women.

"But the only measure they use is how much the women are hooked into U.S. culture," says Oetting.

In fact, in her dissertation, Oetting's then-graduate student Marta Gallego, PhD, found that when she measured women's affiliation with Hispanic culture separately from their affiliation with Anglo culture, increased alcohol consumption was indeed associated with increased affiliation with Anglo culture. But it was not associated with a drop in Hispanic culture. In addition, Oetting finds that bicultural Hispanic women tend to drink when they're in an Anglo setting but not when they're in a Hispanic setting.

These findings point to the importance of context in the study of acculturation, says Oetting. That includes immediate context--including social support, access to people of the same background and even government policies--and the cultural context from which a person is coming, adds Berry.

"We're scared to talk about context in psychology," says USF's Marín. "But we are social beings and that has an influence on who we are and how we behave."

Further reading

* Berry, J.W. Immigration, acculturation and adaptation. Applied Psychology Vol. 46, p. 5­68, 1997.

* Trimble, J.E. Accultur-ation, ethnic identification and the evaluation process. In: "Advanced Methodology Issues in Culturally Competent Evaluation for Substance Abuse Prevention." (SAMHSA, 1996).



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