Health Communication for Displaced Populations| The Limits of Language: New Directions for Measurement of the Buffering Effects of Social Support on Acculturative Stress

Abstract

Existing acculturation measures for Hispanic/Latinx populations have limited capacity to capture the dimensions of acculturation that impact health outcomes. This article explores a new approach that emphasizes acculturative processes relevant to health and well-being. Using data from the U.S. Hispanic/Latinx population (N = 219), we identified and tested four scales measuring family cohesion and pride (a = .97), family cultural conflict (a = .89), cultural retention (a= .87), and neighborhood belonging (a = .81). We argue that these scales capture buffers of acculturative stress related to social support. We conducted quantitative association analyses to evaluate how these scales performed and how they related to traditional measures of acculturation. The findings indicate that traditional measures of acculturation (based on language and cultural affinity) do not fully capture the acculturative processes related to health outcomes. Based on these results, we encourage health communication scholars to explore new directions for measuring acculturation. This study offers one such direction, a first step in disentangling acculturative processes that buffer against the negative health outcomes linked to acculturation.