What Do We Know about Acculturation? a Measurement Invariance Examination of Acculturation Domains between Asian and Latino Populations

Objectives: 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 the attention to the core definitional questions about what acculturation is and how it should be measured, specifically across different racial/ethnic groups.

Methods: Using Brown’s (2014) Multigroup Confirmatory Factor Analysis (MG-CFA) steps, this study examined the measurement invariance by comparing four common domains of acculturation measures across Asian and Hispanic populations (i.e., Ethnic Identification, Language Proficiency and Preference, Acculturative Stress, and other immigration related items) using the National Latino and Asian American Study (NLAAS).

Results: The four-factor model yielded the best fit in comparison to the congeneric one-factor model in the total sample (N=4,649), as well as in the stratified groups (n_Hispanics=2,554 and n_Asians=2,095). The results suggested that aspects of acculturative stress and interpersonal language use measures significantly varied between groups. For example, Latinos had higher factor loadings and higher intercepts (average response) in Acculturative Stress items. In contrast, Asians had a higher residuals (variance/spread/range of answers) in items related to interpersonal language usage.

Conclusions: The results suggested that acculturation does not necessarily measure the same way across all populations and researchers/clinicians should consider racial/ethnic specific scales. Future research should test universal acculturation scales across other ethnic subgroups and include more complex acculturation measures like cultural values and norms.