Acculturation, smoking and physical activity among Vietnamese Americans from the Health of Houston Survey 2010

Prior studies examining the association between acculturation and behavioral risk factors such as smoking and physical activity among Vietnamese Americans show inconsistent findings. The difference in acculturation measurements may have contributed to this discrepancy. No study has used multidimensional measures of acculturation, as recommended, to test these relationships among Vietnamese Americans. Therefore, we analyzed the Vietnamese subset of 328 people from the Health of Houston Survey 2010 dataset to investigate whether being more acculturated, as compared to being less acculturated, is associated with a lower likelihood of smoking and with a higher likelihood of physical activity participation among Vietnamese Americans in Houston. In this study, we combined country of birth and certain language variables to create a bidimensional measure of acculturation. We then examined the association between acculturation and smoking as well as the association between acculturation and physical activity in multivariable logistic regression models. The results suggested an association between acculturation and current smoking status but no relationship between acculturation and physical activity among the study population. Further research with larger sample size is needed to confirm these findings and to test an interaction between acculturation and gender.