A model of acculturative stress: Examining acculturation, social capital, and family role expectations among people of Mexican descent

Hispanics are one of the fastest growing ethnic minority populations in the United States. Concerns about cultural competence thrust acculturation and acculturative stress into the discussion of unique cultural experiences that may affect the functioning of Mexican and Mexican American families. However, the differences in family role expectations and the social capital of family members have not been discussed despite their potential relationship to acculturative stress. Prior to examining bivariate and multivariate relationships regarding these variables, the English version of the Personal Social Capital Scale was validated.;The 9-item Personal Social Capital Scale (alpha=.85) and bonding (alpha=.83) and bridging subscales (alpha=.85) demonstrated acceptable levels of reliability. This version of the Personal Social Capital Scale also demonstrated appropriate model fit after allowing several error terms to correlate producing the following fit indices: chi2/df=2.18 (chi 2=50.1, df=23), RMSEA=.06, CFI=.98, IFI=.98, RFI=.94, TLI=.97, and NFI=.96. The construct validity of the scale produced mixed results. The Pearson's correlation coefficient (r=-.44, p<.01) supported the Personal Social Capital Scale's convergent validity with the Brief Sense of Community Scale. Simple regression results examining gender and education as predictors of Personal Social Capital scores did not provide support of the scale's criterion validity. Despite anticipating a non-significantly significant relationship between global social capital scores and irrational values scale scores, the Pearson's correlation coefficient (r=.17, p<.01) indicated a statistically significant relationship failing to support the scale's discriminant validity. However, when the subscales were examined separately, only the bridging social capital subscale (r=.20, p<.01) produced a statistically significant correlation with the irrational values scale scores.;The bivariate relationships tested did not reveal any significant findings, as acculturation was not a significantly significant predictor of parental (beta=-.02, p=.71) or marital reward value (beta=-.03, p=.61) or parental (beta=-.04, p=.48) and marital commitment (beta=-.05, p=.35). Additionally, acculturation was not a statistically significant predictor of social capital for either the linear (beta=-.03, p=.61) or the curvilinear model (beta=-.03, p=.61), and all bivariate tests indicated that acculturation accounted for a minute portion of variance for all dependent variables. The final part of this study tested several multivariate relationships to identify predictors of acculturative stress.;Acculturation, family role expectations, and social capital were entered into a six-step hierarchical regression model to identify predictors of acculturative stress. The final step of the hierarchical regression model accounted for 16% (R2=.16). An alternative step of the final model entering bonding and bridging social capital as separate variables increased the amount of variance explained (R2=.20). In the alternative model, the demographic variables age (beta=.13, p=.04), lower income status (beta=.20, p<.01), and 3rd generation (beta=.14, p=.03) were statistically significant predictors of acculturative stress with all demographic variables accounting for approximately 8% of the variable's variances. Of the primary variables of interest, only marital commitment (beta=.13, p=.06), bonding social capital (beta=-.22, p<.01), and parental reward value (beta=-.07, p=.23) met criteria for entry into the model, but only bonding social capital was a statistically significant predictor of acculturative stress. The creation and entry of the interaction term between acculturation and marital reward value (beta=.84, p<.01) indicated the importance of considering the syngerentistic effects of acculturation. Additionally, the entry of the interaction term revealed a suppression effect for the component variables (acculturation beta=-.38, p=.02; marital reward value beta=-.64, p=.02), which became statistically significant predictors of acculturative stress as conditional effects.;The results from this study indicate that the Personal Social Capital Scale demonstrates acceptable reliability supported by a well fitting model. However, interpretations of the Personal Social Capital Scores may be limited given the validity results.;It appears bonding aspects of social capital may assist in mitigating acculturative stress, while certain conditional circumstance involving acculturation and marital reward may relate to lower levels of acculturative stress as well. Considering acculturation and marital reward value together (i.e., interaction effects) may also be important in predicting acculturative stress as increases in acculturation and identification with one's marital role may prove to be a difficult balance for people of Mexican descent. However, researchers and social work practitioners should exercise caution when utilizing these results given the emergence of unique effects (i.e., suppression effects), the small effect sizes for individual predictors and limited slope difference for high and low levels of the interaction term. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...