Factor Analysis of the Hazuda’s Acculturation Scale: How Good Is It in Predicting Mammography Screening among Older Mexican American Women from Southeast Texas?

Acculturation has been defined as the process whereby immigrants change their behavior and attitudes toward those of a host society. It is a fundamental part of migration-induced adaptations to a new socio-cultural environment (Roger et al. 1987). Measuring acculturation is important not only as a way of identifying individual or personality differences but also because it has been related to a variety of health variables including public health screening (Balcazar et al. 1995). We used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to assess the dimensionality of the Hazuda (1988) acculturation scale, and we found that CFA did not fit the hypothesized model. Therefore we modified the scale based on exploratory factor analysis. We assessed the predictive validity of the revised scale with logistic regression on country of birth and language of interview. The revised scale was also assessed for the prediction of years of residence using ordinary least squares. We modeled the association between mammography screening and acculturation with logistic regression. We found no statistically significant association between acculturation or language of interview and recent mammography screening after adjusting for several variables.