Puerto Rican And U.S. Essays - Psychometrics, Personality Tests

Puerto Rican And U.S. Essays - Psychometrics, Personality Tests Puerto Rican And U.S. Most instruments designed to measure acculturation have relied on specific cultural behaviors and preferences as primary indicators of acculturation. In contrast, feelings of belonging and emotional attachment to cultural communities have not been widely used. The Psychological Acculturation Scale (PAS) was developed to assess acculturation from a phenomenological perspective, with items pertaining to the individual's sense of psychological attachment to and belonging within the Anglo-American and Latino/Hispanic cultures. Responses from samples of bilingual individuals and Puerto Rican adolescents and adults are used to establish a high degree of measurement equivalence across the Spanish and English versions of the scale along with high levels of internal consistency and construct validity. The usefulness of the PAS and the importance of studying acculturation from a phenomenological perspective are discussed. Psychological acculturation refers to changes in individuals' psychocultural orientations that develop through involvement and interaction within new cultural systems. Rather than conceptualizing acculturation as a process in which people lose connection to their original culture (Gordon, 1978), new research has emphasized the individual's negotiation of two cultural entities (Berry, Poortinga, Segall, Buriel, 1993). Responding to distinct sets of norms from the culture of origin and the host culture, acculturating individuals emerge with their own interpretation of appropriate values, customs, and practices as they negotiate between cultural contexts (Berry, 1980). People vary greatly in their abilities to function within new cultural environments (LaFromboise, Coleman, & Gerton, 1993) and may seek different levels of attachment to and involvement in a host culture or their culture(s) of origin (Padilla, 1980). To study individuals' cultural orientations, measures of acculturation traditionally have focused on individuals' behaviors and behavioral preferences and have relied heavily on language use and other behaviors as indicators of acculturation (Marin, Sabogal, VanOss Matin, Otero-Sabogal, Szapocznik, Kurtines, & Fernandez, 1980). For example, Szapocznik et al. (1980) described acculturation as based in two primary dimensions: cultural behaviors and values. Paralleling their conceptualization of acculturation, the Behavioral Acculturation Scale (Szapocznik, Scopetta, Kurtines, & Aranalde, 1978) includes items most closely related to cultural behaviors and preferences (e.g., What language do you speak at home? and What language do you prefer to speak?). Similarly, Cuellar, Harris, and Jasso (1980) measured acculturation with items pertaining primarily to cultural behaviors and values (e.g., What language do you prefer?). This measure also included several items concerning migration history (e.g., Where were you raised?) and one item concerning ethnic self-identification (i.e., How do you identify yourself?). These factors can be important in interpreting individuals' acculturation experiences; however, rather than assessing personal acculturation factors and sociodemographic factors as separate concepts, Cuellar et al. (1980) combined these items within the same measure. We feel that this approach may be problematic in two primary ways. First, such modes of measurement blur distinctions between factual histories of individuals (e.g., age of arrival on the U.S. mainland) and the assessment of individuals' acculturative change. Second, measures heavily based on cultural behaviors may not assess adequately individuals' acceptance and understanding of the values from each culture (Betancourt Rogler, 1994) or grant sufficient attention to individuals' emotional attachments to each culture (Estrada, 1993). Alternatively, new instruments can be designed to measure acculturation as it is psychologically experienced by the individual. Reviews of the acculturation literature have identified cultural loyalty, solidarity, identification, and comprehension as overlapping elements of psychological responses to cultural exposure (Berry, 1980; Betancourt Szapocznik & Kurtines, 1980). To assess these psychological components of acculturation, the 10-item Psychological Acculturation Scale (PAS) was developed. Unlike traditional measures, the PAS targets individuals' psychological negotiation of two cultural entities (in this case, Anglo-American culture and Latino/Hispanic culture), with particular attention to their sense of emotional attachment to and understanding of each culture. This set of studies was designed to assess the psychometric properties of the PAS. In particular, cross-language equivalence, internal consistency, and convergent and discriminant validity were examined. CROSS-LANGUAGE EQUIVALENCE Back translation and decentering are widely used methods for determining cross-language equivalence of a scale (Brislin, 1986). For example, to create a Spanish version of an English-language measure, one person translates from English to Spanish, and a different person translates the Spanish version back into English. Discrepancies in the translated versions are resolved through decentering, a process of several iterations whereby the measure is pulled away from the idiosyncrasies of the source language (i.e., the original English-language version). We share the concerns of Bontempo (1993) and Olmedo (1981) about the validity of this accepted procedure. Even when original and back-translated versions are quite similar, measurement equivalence can still not be assumed or guaranteed for the two language versions because concepts and wordings for scale items originally were produced in only the source language (Bontempo, 1993; Olmedo, 1981). As an alternative,