An Empirical Scale to Measure Type and Degree of Acculturation in Mexican American Adolescents and Adults

Abstract

This article describes a self-report instrument designed to measure type and degree of acculturation in Mexican-American adolescents and adults. The proposed instrument can be used to measure levels of acculturation on five relatively orthogonal dimensions: intrafamily language usage, extrafamily language usage, social affiliations and activities, cultural familiarity and activities, and cultural identification and pride. The inventory can also be used to generate separate estimates of cultural resistance, cultural incorporation, and cultural shift, and to identify dominant or nondominant cultural lifestyle tendencies. Empirical data concerning the content and construct validity, temporal stability, internal consistency, and equivalence of the Spanish and English versions of the scale are presented and discussed.