EMPIRICALLY TESTING THE VALIDITY AND RELIABILITY OF THE CULTURAL INTELLIGENT SCALE TO STUDY INTRA-CULTURAL ACCULTURALIZATION

Abstract

ABSTRACT The application of the Cultural Intelligence Scale has rapidly increased since its development by Ang et al. (2007). However, the focus of the research related to cultural intelligence has neglected subcultures and the related impacts that acculturation has on them. There is a paucity in the literature for the intracultural relations. Hence, this paper looks at the validity and reliability of the Cultural Intelligence Scale to measure intracultural acculturation process. This would allow future researchers to expand the cultural intelligence research to the vast amount of subcultures that exist. This study uses factor analysis, average variance extracted, and Cronbach’s alpha to determine the validity and reliability of the Cultural Intelligence Scale. This study has a sample of 100 African American graduates from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). They work in an organization where most of the employees are non-African Americans. The results of the factor analysis, factor loadings over .50 and no cross loadings, reflect a very strong underlying factor structure. The average variance extracted of 0.535 means that more variance is explained than error remaining in the latent construct and the Cronbach’s alpha of .933 reflects the strong reliability of the Cultural Intelligence Scale when applied to subcultures. These findings suggest the high level of validity and reliability of the Cultural Intelligence Scale when applied to subcultures. Implications from this research as well as limitations and future research directions are also discussed. Keywords Culture; Subculture; Acculturation; Cultural Intelligence; Intercultural; Intracultural