Assessing attitudes towards mutual acculturation in multicultural schools: Conceptualisation and validation of a four-dimensional mutual acculturation attitudes scale

Assessment of acculturation attitudes usually has focused on the importance of two dimensions: first, immigrants’ maintenance of cultural heritage and, second, immigrants’ adoption of the majority culture. Because acculturation is a reciprocal interaction, we extended a bidimensional scale to four dimensions to assess mutual acculturation. Given the importance of the social context for acculturation and schools as a crucial context for immigrant pupils’ acculturation, the scale extension was validated within the context of school. We hypothesised that acculturation attitudes are held not only towards immigrant pupils but also towards native pupils and towards schools’ responsibility to support intercultural contact. The study sample comprised 364 secondary school pupils in Swiss multicultural schools. Using exploratory structural equation modelling, we validated four distinct dimensions of acculturation attitudes: attitudes towards immigrant pupils’ (a) heritage culture maintenance and (b) adoption of the dominant culture and attitudes towards (c) native pupils acquiring cultural knowledge and (d) schools enabling intercultural contact. We conclude that the proposed four-dimensional scale is a valid tool for assessing attitudes towards mutual acculturation within the school context and that acculturation attitudes are held not only towards immigrant pupils but also towards native pupils and schools.     

Bringing together acculturation theory and intergroup contact theory: Predictors of Flemings’ expectations of Turks’ acculturation behavior

The present paper explores Flemish majority members’ expectations concerning the acculturation of Turkish minorities. We studied two kinds of antecedents: majority members’ perceptions of Turkish minorities’ acculturation behavior and their experiences of intergroup contact. The possible mediating role of outgroup affect was also investigated. 247 Flemish high school students completed a survey. Data were analyzed using path analyses. Results show that positive contact experiences and perceiving that Turkish immigrants make efforts to engage in contact with the host group and/or to adopt the host culture are associated with less negative affective reactions towards Turkish migrants. Perceiving that Turkish immigrants maintain their heritage culture is associated with more negative affective reactions. Our results further revealed that increased negative affective reactions are associated with less support for culture maintenance and for contact with the host group but with a higher demand for host culture adoption. The present results also show that expectations of contact engagement and expectations of host culture adoption cannot be considered as equivalent. This implies that results from studies using Berry's conceptualization of acculturation expectations (Berry, 2001) and results from studies using Bourhis’ conceptualization of acculturation expectations (Bourhis, Moïse, Perreault, & Senécal, 1997) are not directly comparable. Our data also clearly disconfirm the orthogonal structure of the fourfold acculturation model for majority members’ acculturation expectations, suggesting that relying on the specific dimensions defining acculturation expectations may constitute a more valid approach to understand ongoing acculturation processes.     

Short form measure of cultural intelligence: A Portuguese validation

More and more workplaces need employees who can work effectively with people of diverse cultural contexts. Cultural intelligence is a core social ability to interact successfully in cross-cultural environments. The Short Form measure of Cultural Intelligence (SFCQ) has been validated in several countries, although not for Portuguese-speaking countries. This paper describes the findings of three studies conceived to validate the SFCQ in the Portuguese language. The first study supports the SFCQ scale as unidimensional with three intermediate facets and possessing adequate internal consistency in a sample of college students (N = 217). In favor of construct validity, the instrument is weakly associated with but dissimilar to ethnocentrism and personality and is positively related to various markers of multicultural experience. Regarding criterion-validity, the SFCQ is related, as expected, to sociocultural adaptation and having a close friend from another culture. The second study supports the construct validity and the concurrent validity of the Portuguese SFCQ scale using a different sample of national college students (N = 195). The final study (N = 181) also supported the construct, the convergent, and the criterion-related validities of the Portuguese SFCQ scale in a sample of international students. It merits noting that in these three studies cultural intelligence emerged as a second-order single factor with three first-order factors, in particular, cultural knowledge, cultural skills, and cultural metacognition. These results substantiate the validity of the SFCQ and demonstrate this Portuguese version as a tool with substantial evidence for easily assessing cultural intelligence.     

A resilience-based and meaning-oriented model of acculturation: A sample of mainland Chinese postgraduate students in Hong Kong

Traditional acculturation research has focused mainly on acculturative stress and its negative consequences on the mental health of migrants. However, there has recently been a substantial paradigm shift in acculturation research from a psychopathological perspective to a resilience framework, which focuses on positive adaptation outcomes and their contributing protective factors. The purpose of this study was to investigate how to improve the emotional well-being of migrants by developing and testing a resilience model of acculturation using mainland Chinese postgraduate students in Hong Kong as the sample. A total of 400 mainland Chinese students were recruited from six universities in Hong Kong through a cross-sectional survey. A resilience-based and meaning-oriented model of acculturation was developed for Chinese students by path analysis and structural equation modeling. Threat appraisal and sense-making coping partially mediated the relationship between acculturative hassles and negative affect. The effect of acculturative hassles on positive affect was mediated by two pathways: the first was mediated by threat appraisal, sense-making coping, and negative affect; the second was mediated by meaning-in-life. The findings suggest that acculturative hassles and threat appraisal are significant risk factors and that sense-making coping and meaning-in-life are important protective factors for psychological adjustment in cross-cultural adaptation.     

A latent class analysis of acculturation and depressive symptoms among Latino immigrants: Examining the role of social support

Drawing upon Berry’s (1980) bi-dimensional model of acculturation and using data from a community-based sample of adults in Miami-Dade, Florida, the current investigation compared various immigrant acculturation profiles in their levels of depressive symptoms and assessed the mediating role of social support in explaining mental health differences across these acculturation profiles. Latent class analysis specified separated, partial separated, bicultural and marginal profiles of acculturation among Latino immigrants. Notably, our findings identified a small, albeit significant, marginal class among Latino immigrants, and both bivariate and multivariate findings demonstrated that those in marginal class reported the poorest mental health. Our findings further revealed that the observed mental health disadvantage among the marginal class relative to other immigrants was due to their disadvantage in family support . Overall, this investigation further underscores the importance of family support as an element of immigrant acculturation experience and mental health. From a policy perspective, social support, specifically family support, is critical for immigrant mental health, and a lack of family support may increase the risk for developing a marginal experience and mental health problems among a growing population of Latino immigrants in the United States.     

Acculturation, well-being and classroom behaviour among white British and British Asian primary-school children in the south–east of England: Validating a child-friendly measure of acculturation attitudes

Using a sample of white British and British Asian primary-school children (N = 386, aged 5–11 years), we measured acculturation attitudes (own and perceived outgroup), correlated constructs (ingroup and outgroup affect and identification) and relevant outcomes (self-esteem, classroom demeanour) in a structured interview to validate a customised, child-friendly measure of acculturation attitudes based on Berry's framework. Scale items measuring desire for culture maintenance and intergroup contact loaded onto the predicted factors, were internally reliable and showed concurrent validity with affect and identification. The predictive utility of measures was demonstrated in associations between children's acculturation attitudes (or perceived discrepancies with those of the outgroup) and outcomes such as self-esteem and teacher ratings of emotional symptoms.     

Meaning of life as a protective factor of positive affect in acculturation: A resilience framework and a cross-cultural comparison

Although research has demonstrated a strong linkage between meaning of life and positive emotion, few studies have examined this association in the context of acculturation. The purpose of this study was to investigate the predictive effects of meaning of life and acculturative stressor on positive affect in a sample of Chinese international students in Australia and Hong Kong, and to compare these effects between the two groups. Four hundred mainland Chinese postgraduate students at six universities in Hong Kong and 227 Chinese international students at the University of Melbourne in Australia completed a questionnaire that included measures of acculturative stressor, meaning of life, positive affect, and demographic information. The analyses revealed that (1) meaning of life had a strong positive contribution to predict positive affect in acculturation, and acculturative stress had a negative impact on positive affect within both samples; (2) social interaction had a significant negative predictive effect on positive affect in both samples, and academic work served as a significant negative predictor of positive affect in the Hong Kong sample; and (3) meaning of life was found to mediate the relationship between acculturative stress and positive affect in both samples. The theoretical and practical implications of the study are discussed.     

Development and validation of a scale of support for violence in the context of intergroup conflict (SVIC): The case of violence perpetrated by Mapuche people and the police in Chile

We develop and validate a scale that measures support for violence in the context of an asymmetrical intergroup conflict between the Chilean state and the largest ethnic minority group in Chile, the Mapuche people: the scale of Support for Violence in an Intergroup Conflict (SVIC). The proposed scale has two dimensions that capture the perceived acceptability of violence carried out in both directions: support for violence carried out by radical Mapuche activists and support for violence carried out by the police in the name of the Chilean state. We validate the scale in a survey conducted using two independent samples: a sample of Mapuche (n₁ = 199) and a sample of non-indigenous Chilean respondents (n₂ = 195). We test measurement invariance of the scale and find evidence that it is a valid instrument across both samples. Furthermore, findings suggest that the scale has discriminant validity, i.e., it correlates weakly with aggressiveness; as well as convergent validity, i.e., support for violence carried out by Mapuche activists correlates positively with Mapuche identification and negatively with Chilean identification, and the reverse is true for support for violence carried out by the police. We finish by highlighting the importance of measuring support for violence in the context of an asymmetrical intergroup conflict considering violence carried out by the different parties involved in the conflict, as well as the importance of validating the scale considering samples of representatives of both parties.