Measures Matter
By Kali A. Demes, N. Geeraert. 2014
308 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Building upon existing measures, four new brief acculturation scales are presented, measuring sociocultural adaptation, psychological adaptation, perceived cultural distance, and acculturation orientation. Following good scale reliability in initial samples, the English scales were translated into nine different languages (Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Thai, and Turkish). The translated scales were administered to a large sample of sojourners (N = 1,929), demonstrating good reliability and adequate structural equivalence across languages. In line with existing theory, sociocultural adaptation and psychological adaptation were positively correlated, and showed a negative association with perceived cultural distance. General measures of well-being were correlated with adaptation and distance, with better adaptation relating to higher well-being, and more distance relating to lower well-being. Acculturation orientation toward the home and host culture were measured separately and a weak negative correlation was found between the two, supporting their independence. Arguing against dichotomization, these subscales were analyzed as continuous variables. Regression analysis showed sojourners to be better adapted, if they were oriented more toward the host culture and less toward the home culture. These new scales are proposed as alternatives to existing measures.
Subfields: Communication, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/13a8cb7f6501c8fd8d9c81f9e1f003223b3659da
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Citations in the corpus
- The academic adjustment scale: Measuring the adjustment of permanent resident or sojourner students (2016, background): “…(Ward & Kennedy, 1993), and is typically considered in terms of stress and coping (see Berry, 1997; Ward, 1996).1 Researchers have developed a series of psychometrically stable measures to capture sojourner adjustment (e.g., Demes & Geeraert, 2014; Pedersen, Neighbors, Larimer, & Lee, 2011).”