Evaluating a brief measure of bicultural stress for US-born Mexican Americans

• In Event: Understanding Cultural Processes Among Hispanic/Latinx Youth

Abstract

Scholars have long recognized that US-born Mexican Americans can experience stress as a result of having to navigate two, sometimes competing, cultural spaces. Indeed, US-born Mexican Americans can at times feel pressure to adhere to their Mexican cultural heritage and at other times feel pressured to adhere to their American cultural heritage. We refer to such experiences as Mexican and American cultural pressures, which we consider defining aspects of bicultural stress (Romero & Roberts, 2003). With roots in acculturation research, existing assessments of bicultural stress include some items that are either not relevant to US-born Mexican Americans (e.g., missing one’s home country) or tap related but distinct constructs (e.g., perceived discrimination). This observation led us to develop a brief, 10-item measure of bicultural stress for use with US-born Mexican Americans, for inclusion in a longitudinal study of US-born Mexican American emerging adults. In this presentation we report the results of our initial psychometric evaluation of this measure.

The sample includes 396 US-born Mexican American first-time college freshmen (58.3% female) at a large Hispanic Serving Institution in the South-Central US. The participants completed online surveys at the beginning of the Fall 2021 semester (Wave 1) and at the end of the Fall 2021 (Wave 2), Spring 2022 (Wave 3), and Summer 2022 (Wave 4) semesters, with a retention rate of 90.2%. Data from the 390 participants who completed the bicultural stress measure at one or more of the waves were analyzed. The 10-item bicultural stress measure was completed at Waves 2, 3, and 4. The measure includes 5 mirror items that assess past 3-month experiences with Mexican and American cultural pressures (e.g., you didn’t know the [Mexican/American] way of doing things), with yes/no response options. The participants also completed measures of depressive symptoms, anxiety, anger, sleep problems, and perceived ethnic discrimination.

Confirmatory item factor analyses showed that a two-factor structure (i.e., Mexican and American cultural pressures) provided an acceptable to good fit to the data. This was the case cross-sectionally (for each wave separately) and longitudinally, thus demonstrating structural invariance. The Kuder-Richardson 20 coefficients ranged from .76-.87 and the test-retest reliability coefficients ranged from .74-.86. The inter-factor correlations ranged from .35-.45 within waves and .12-.29 across waves. Providing evidence of concurrent validity, both Mexican and American cultural pressures were significantly correlated with anxiety, depressive symptoms, anger, and sleep problems within waves (rs=.19-.37, M=.28, SD=.05), and the magnitudes of the correlations were similar for both factors (M difference=-.01, SD=.05). In addition, perceived discrimination was positively associated with both Mexican (rs=.30-.42) and American (rs=.56-.59) cultural pressures, with the magnitudes of the correlations stronger for the latter. Additional results are provided in Table 2.

These results provide initial evidence of construct, concurrent, and discriminant validity for our measure. Additional results evaluating the longitudinal measurement invariance and predictive validity of the measure will be presented. As a whole, these findings pave the way for better understanding US-born Mexican Americans’ stress rooted in the experiences of navigating two cultural spaces.

Authors

• Jacqueline Lucero, University of Texas at San Antonio
  Presenting Author

• Miriam M Martinez, University of Texas at San Antonio

• Brendon Decker, The University of Texas at San Antonio

• Brian E Armenta, University of Texas at San Antonio