The acculturation paradigm of measuring assimilation, separation, integration and marginalization confuses dimensional and categorical conceptions of its constructs, fails to produce ipsative data from mutually exclusive scales, misoperationalizes marginalization as distress, mismeasures biculturalism using double-barreled questions instead of computing it from unicultural measures, and then te...

OBJECTIVE A significant impact of limited schooling and illiteracy has been found on numerous neuropsychological tests, which may partly be due to the ecological relevance of the tests in the context of illiteracy. The aims of this study were to compare the performance of illiterate and literate immigrants on two semantic criteria for the verbal fluency test, and examine the influence of accult...

OBJECTIVES: To explore the collective and individual experiences that Latin American females in the U.S. have with substance abuse, violence and risky sexual behaviors. METHODS: This study was conducted in two phases from July 2006 to June 2007 in south Florida. This paper covers Phase 2. In Phase 2, questionnaires were provided to women to test whether there is a relationship between demograp...

OBJECTIVE To determine the predictive ability of acculturation as an antecedent of stress, biobehavioral risk, corticotropin-releasing hormone levels, and poor birth outcomes in pregnant Hispanic women. DESIGN A prospective, observational design with data collected at 22-25 weeks of gestation and at birth through medical record review. SETTING Public prenatal health clinics in south Texas s...

OBJECTIVES To ascertain the effects of parent-adolescent acculturation gaps, perceived discrimination, and perceived negative context of reception on adolescent cigarette smoking, alcohol use, sexual activity, and sexual risk taking. We used an expanded, multidimensional model of acculturation. METHOD A sample of 302 recently immigrated parent-adolescent dyads (152 from Miami and 150 from Los...

OBJECTIVES This study had two primary objectives: First, to examine the nature and co-occurrence of various forms of child maltreatment (sexual, physical, emotional, and witnessing violence) reported by Latina college students, and second, to explore coexisting maltreatment types and acculturation status as possible contributors to long-term adjustment difficulties. METHOD Participants were 1...

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES To describe the experience of chemotherapy-induced premature menopause (CIPM) among Latinas, explore how CIPM was assimilated into the breast cancer experience, and relate measured acculturation levels to the CIPM experience. RESEARCH APPROACH Interpretive descriptive method from a feminist inquiry lens. SETTING Telephone interviews with participants from 12 states in the...

OBJECTIVE The goal of the study was to evaluate the effect of family cohesiveness, acculturation, socioeconomic position, and cardiovascular risk factors on severity of diabetes among Mexican Americans. DESIGN AND STUDY POPULATION The cross-sectional study involved a consecutive sample of 275 Mexican Americans under treatment for type 2 diabetes recruited from two medical clinics on the north...

This study used data from 845 foreign-born (n = 328) and native-U.S. born (n = 517) Hispanic mothers who participated in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS) to examine four indicators of acculturation--nativity, years lived in the United States, religious attendance, and endorsement of traditional gender norms--as predictors of maternal physical aggression directed toward you...

Acculturation has been implicated to be associated with physical activity (PA) behaviors in adults; little is known, however, with respect to the pediatric population. The purpose of this study was to determine whether cardiorespiratory fitness (VO2max) and/or PA were associated with acculturation status in overweight Hispanic children. In a sample of 144 children 8-13 years old, acculturation ...