Acculturation Rating Scale for Mexican Americans-Short Form

Dawson, E. J., Crano, W. D., & Burgoon, M. (1996). Refining the meaning and measurement of acculturation: Revisiting a novel methodological approach. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 20(1), 97-114.

The Acculturation Rating Scale for Mexican Americans (ARSMA) of Cuéllar, Harris, and Jasso (1980) is a widely used instrument of high reliability. Attempts to refine and validate the measure have been limited largely to factor analytic techniques. Typically three or four orthogonal factors are extracted from this measure. However, these factors usually are ignored in practice, and a single summed acculturation score is calculated across all items. The present research illustrates the dangers of factoring scales of extremely high internal consistency, and suggests an alternative. This alternative, applied to the responses of 790 Hispanic Americans, successfully reduces the ARSMA by half while maintaining its high internal consistency. The reduced measure is clearly single factored, strongly relates to the full scale, and replicates earlier results. The results of this scale construction/refinement suggest a strong link between communication and acculturation.