What do we know about acculturation? A measurement invariance examination of acculturation domains between Asian and latinx populations

ABSTRACT

Acculturation has emerged as a key variable in racial/ethnic minorities and immigrant research. Although findings generally conclude acculturation leads to adverse outcomes (e.g., risk behaviors), scholars often find contradicting results. This increased attention to the core definitional questions about what acculturation is and how it should be measured, specifically across different racial/ethnic groups. This study examined the measurement invariance using Multigroup Confirmatory Factor Analysis (MG-CFA) by comparing three common domains of acculturation measures across Asian and Hispanic populations (i.e., Ethnic Identification, Language Proficiency and Preference, and Acculturative Stress) using the National Latino and Asian American Study (NLAAS). A total sample of 4,649 (n_Latinx = 2,554 and n_Asian = 2,095) was used. The results suggested that aspects of ethnic identification and acculturative stress measures significantly varied between groups. For example, Latinxs had higher factor loadings in certain Acculturative Stress items related to government and legal status. In contrast, Asians had higher factor loadings in an item related to Ethnic Identification. The results suggested that aspects of acculturation do not necessarily measure the same way across all populations; researchers/clinicians should consider racial/ethnic specific scales when using acculturation related measures. Future research should test universal acculturation scales across other ethnic subgroups and include more complex acculturation measures like cultural values and norms.

KEYWORDS:

• acculturation
• measurement invariance
• ethnic identification
• language proficiency and preference
• acculturative stress

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data associated with this paper can be found in Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research data repository under https://doi.org/10.1002/mpr.181

Data deposition

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created; data used in the study is publicly accessible.

Ethical consideration

The NLAAS study obtained institutional review board (IRB) approval from Cambridge Health Alliance, the University of Washington, and the University of Michigan, and no additional IRB approval was necessary because the data were obtained from a publicly available secondary source.

Financial interests

The author has no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse grants under Grant T32DA007233-36.