Friday, 14 January 2005 - 10:00 AM

This presentation is part of: Acculturation and Biculturalism in Latino Adolescents: Mapping Risk and Protective Factors, Examining Measurement Strategies, and Evaluating Intervention Approaches

Acculturation and Ethnic Identity: Culturally-Grounded Prevention with Mexican-American Youth

Using self-reports from Mexican-American youth who took part in a randomized trial of keepin’ it REAL, this study examines the role of acculturation in a culturally grounded school-based drug prevention intervention. keepin’ it REAL teaches drug resistance skills grounded in the life experience of the participants. The core curriculum was developed into two 10-session versions comprising (1) a Mexican-American curriculum and (2) a European-American/African-American curriculum. A third version, formed from the combined elements of the other two, became a Multicultural curriculum.

The study focused on the effect of acculturation status (measured through language preference) and strength of ethnic identity (i.e., ethnic affiliation, attachment and pride) on substance use and substance use mediators. Those effects also were examined to determine if they served as moderators of the curriculum’s effectiveness.

Results based on pretest and 14-month post-test questionnaires completed by 2,146 Mexican-heritage, 7th grade students enrolled at 35 Phoenix, Arizona middle schools will be presented. To pinpoint the impact of strong ethnic identity, students identifying with a mixture of Mexican and other ethnic backgrounds were excluded from analysis. The analysis was conducted using multi-variate models to account for school level data nesting as well as the multiple imputation of missing data. Desired program effects were found to be stronger for more acculturated students but were not related to a strong sense of ethnic identity. For both pretest and posttest responses, less acculturated students (both Spanish dominant and bilingual) reported relatively low levels of substance use for both intervention and control groups, while more acculturated students (English dominant) had much higher baseline levels of substance use. Program effects, therefore, were confined to the more acculturated students since those participating in the intervention reported much smaller increases in substance use and less erosion in anti-drug mediators than did those students in the control group. Despite the expectation that different versions of the program might produce stronger desired program effects for students in different acculturation statuses (Spanish dominant influenced more by the Mexican-American version, English dominant by the European-/African-American version, and bilingual students by the Multicultural version), no significant interactions between acculturation and intervention version were found. Furthermore, although strong positive ethnic identity was associated with less substance use and stronger anti-drug norms, a stronger positive ethnic identify was not shown to be a significant moderator of program effects.

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