Surveying the Literature on Acculturation and Alcohol Use among Hispanic College Students: We're Not All on the Same Page

Abstract

During the past several years, a steadily growing body of literature examining acculturation and alcohol use among Hispanic college students has emerged. A review of this literature suggests that there have been (and continues to be) mixed findings regarding the association between acculturation and alcohol use in this population. Thus, the exact nature of this association is not clear. This paper provides an overview of this literature and outlines recommendations for future research that will help to elucidate the complexities inherent in this line of work.

Keywords: :

• Acculturation
• alcohol use
• Hispanics
• college students

THE AUTHORS

Byron L. Zamboanga, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Smith College. His primary research interests focus on the cognitive, social, and cultural correlates of alcohol use and misuse among high school and college students.

Cara C. Tomaso is an undergraduate at Smith College. She is pursuing a psychology major with a minor in statistics. Her research interests include high-risk drinking behaviors, such as prepartying and drinking games participation, in adolescents and college students. After Smith, she plans to apply to doctoral programs in clinical psychology.

Karli K. Kondo, Ph.D., is an Investigator with the AHRQ Scientific Resource Center and VA Evidence-based Synthesis Program, and an Assistant Professor in the School of Professional Psychology at Pacific University. Her primary research interests center on the intersection of culture and health related behaviors.

Seth J. Schwartz, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Public Health Sciences in the University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine. He is President-Elect for the Society for the Study of Emerging Adulthood and is senior editor of the Handbook of Identity Theory and Research and of the forthcoming Handbook of Acculturation and Health. His research interests center on personal and cultural identity and their effects on health outcomes among diverse groups of adolescents and emerging adults.

Notes

1 Hispanic remains an often used, misleading consensualized nosology representing heterogeneous populations. Editor's note.

2 The reader is asked to consider that with the advent of artificial science and its theoretical underpinnings (chaos, complexity, and uncertainty theories) it is now posited that much of human behavior is complex, dynamic, multidimensional, level/phase structured, nonlinear, law-driven, and bounded (culture, time, place, age, gender, ethnicity, etc.). “Acculturation,” however it is defined, would be such a behavior/process. There are two important issues to consider and which are derived from this: (1) Using linear models/tools to study nonlinear processes/phenomena can and does result in misleading conclusions and can, therefore, also result in inappropriate intervention; (2) the concepts prediction and control have different meanings and dimensions than they do in the more traditional linear “cause and effect” paradigms. (Buscema, M. (1998), Artificial Neural Networks, Substance Use & Misuse, 33(1–3)). Editor's note.

3 The reader is asked to consider that concepts and processes such as “risk” and “protective” factors are often noted in the literature, without adequately delineating their dimensions (linear, nonlinear, rates of development, sustainability, and cessation, etc.), their “demands,” the critical necessary conditions (endogenously as well as exogenously; micro to macro levels) which are necessary for them to operate (begin, continue, become anchored and integrate, change as de facto realities change, cease, etc.) or not to operate and whether their underpinnings are theory-driven, empirically-based, individual and/or systemic stake holder-bound, historically-bound, based upon “principles of faith” or what. This is necessary to clarify, if possible, if these terms are not to remain as yet additional shibboleths in a field of many stereotypes. Editor's note.

4 The reader is referred to Hills's criteria for causation which were developed in order to help assist researchers and clinicians determine if risk factors were causes of a particular disease or outcomes or merely associated. (Hill, A. B. (1965). The environment and disease: Associations or causation? Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 58: 295–300.) Editor's note.