Family dynamics and acculturation

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 59-67)Some acculturation strategies create more stress than others. It is important to identify which strategies generate less stress and are most effective in managing stress for individual immigrating from countries outside of the United States. The objective of this research is to explore the effects of the family dynamics on adoption of various acculturation strategies. The acculturation strategies considered for this study are integration, assimilation, separation and marginalization acculturation strategies. The population of this study is 122 California State University, Northridge first, second or third generation immigrant students. The Family Environment Scale (FES) is used to measure family dynamics, while the Vancouver Index of Acculturation (VIA) is used to measure acculturation strategies. The results show that the odds of participants adopting a separation acculturation strategy increase when conflict in family dynamics is low. Also, the odds of paiiicipants adopting separation and assimilation strategies increase when the age is high (i.e., when the participant is older). Finally, the results indicate that the odds of participants adopting marginalization and separation strategies decrease when years of residing in the US is high. Therefore, a separation strategy (i.e., when an individual maintains and values the traditional culhlfe and does not want to interact with other cultural groups) is more likely to be used when conflict in family dynamics is low. Older participants seemed to prefer either a separation strategy or an assimilation strategy (i.e., when a person does not want to maintain the traditional culture and instead interacts and participates with other cultural groups), but if participants of all ages have lived in the US for a longer period, then less use of a separation strategy or a marginalization strategy (i.e., when a person has little interest in maintaining the traditional culture and is unwilling to interact with other cultural groups as well) is likely