The challenge of acculturation measures: What are we missing? A commentary on Thomson & Hoffman-Goetz

Abstract

With the swelling number of immigrants coming to the US, there has been a growing concern about development of measures that capture the gradual process of acculturation; yet there has been no consensus on what to measure and how to measure it. Acculturation (i.e. defined as a multidimensional process of the adoption of U.S. cultural norms, values and lifestyles; see Lara, Gamboa, Kahramanian, Morales, & Bautista, 2005) and enculturation (i.e. defined as the preservation of native cultural values, norms or lifestyle patterns), have been hypothesized to be linked to health outcomes of different ethnic groups such as Asians and Latinos (Kim & Ominzo, 2006). Federal reports and research studies over the past three decades continue to document that acculturation is a critical factor associated with a wide range of health outcomes and health behaviors (Alegria, Sribney, Woo, Torres, & Guarnaccia, 2007; Amaro & De la Torre, 2002; Andreeva, Unger, Yaroch, Cockburn, Baezconde-Garbanati, & Reynolds, 2009; Caetano, Vaeth, Ramisetty-Mikler, & Rodriguez, 2009; De La Rosa, Vega, & Radisch, 2000; Fuentes-Afflick & Hessol, 2008; Johnson-Kozlow, 2009; Montez & Eschbach, 2008; Sussner, Lindsay, & Peterson, 2007). During this same period, empirical investigations have reported inconsistent findings regarding the role of acculturation, mostly attributed to the pronounced variation in the assessment of acculturation, the proxy nature of many of these measures and the lack of cross-cultural validity of the measures (Rogler, Cortes, & Malgady, 1991; Stevens & Vollebergh, 2008).