With regard to ethnic identity, a separation orientation most likely might result from

Cultur Divers Ethnic Minor Psychol. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2008 May 5.

Published in final edited form as:

PMCID: PMC2366198

NIHMSID: NIHMS43628

Abstract

Berry, Trimble, and Olmedo’s (1986) acculturation model was used to investigate the relationship among adolescents’ acculturation strategies, personal self-esteem, and collective self-esteem. Using data from 427 high school students, factor analysis results distinguished Collective Self-esteem Scale constructs (Luhtanen & Crocker, 1992) from both ethnic identity and outgroup orientation subscales of the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (Phinney, 1992). Subsequent results showed that: 1) both acculturation dimensions were correlated with personal and collective self-esteems, 2) integrationists shared similar levels of personal and collective self-esteems with assimilationists and/or separationists, and 3) marginalizationists generally had the lowest levels of personal and collective self-esteems. Implications are drawn for understanding acculturation among adolescents and for the utility of group-level measures of self-esteem.

Keywords: Acculturation, Collective Self-esteem, Personal Self-esteem

Growing up in the United States, especially in large urban cities, has increasingly involved interactions with members of different ethnic groups. According to the Social Science Data Network (2004) analysis of U.S. Census data, large urban counties (such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York City) consisted of predominately White communities in the 1980s. However, from 1980 to 2000, the general proportions of Latino/as and Asians rose, while the percentage of Whites declined. Currently, the percentages of Latino/as and Asians, alone or in combination, are typically greater than that of Whites in the same counties. As a result, community members, especially adolescents, are increasingly likely to grow up and interact with members of others ethnic groups in multiethnic cities.

Originally developed to explain immigrant adaptation, acculturation generally refers to how sustained intergroup contact changes the behaviors and psychological processes among members of interacting groups (Berry, Trimble and Olmedo 1986; Berry & Kim, 1988). Although acculturation research has typically focused on immigrants and ethnic minority adults, in principle and within ethnically diverse settings, acculturation applies to all participating ethnic group members from various age groups (Berry, 2001; Molina, Wittig, & Giang, 2004).

While there are numerous ways of operationalizing acculturation (such as measures of behavior, generation status, time spent in country), the present study focuses on the psychological dimensions of acculturation and their relationship to personal and collective self-esteem. According to Berry et al. (1986), there are two psychological dimensions of acculturation: 1) the degree of concern for maintaining one’s cultural identity and characteristics, and 2) the value or importance of interacting and maintaining relationships with other ethnic groups. We use the terms ethnic identity and outgroup orientation, respectively, to describe these acculturation dimensions. As we will discuss in a brief review of acculturation literature, the intersection of these dimensions forms Berry et al.’s four acculturation strategies.

Acculturation and Adolescents

As they enter high school, adolescents face heightened concerns about their identity and sense of belonging to a group (Erikson, 1968, Phinney, 1993). This is compounded by exposure to new perspectives, knowledge, and experiences from other students and cultures. This combination of internally-driven concern and externally-based exposure to multicultural information may elicit a crisis phase regarding one’s identity and search for a resolution.

From an acculturation framework (Berry et al., 1986), adolescents have four options in their search for a resolution. Adolescents who embrace the opportunity to interact with others and personally explore their ethnic identity are said to adopt an integration strategy. In adopting a separation strategy, individuals retreat from interactions with members of other ethnic groups and increase their attachment and involvement with their own ethnic group. Another option is to pursue opportunities to interact with others but ignore one’s cultural heritage or ethnic identity via an assimilation strategy. In the most uncommon strategy, individuals who prefer a marginalization strategy neither identify with their ethnic group nor search out interactions with members of other groups (Rudmin & Ahmadzadeh, 2001).

As an age group, adolescents have seldom been studied from an acculturation framework. Acculturation studies (e.g., Pham and Harris, 2001; Ward & Rana-Deuba, 1996) have typically examined adults (age 21 to 40). In addition, most acculturation research focuses on individuals’ identity with or attachment to their ethnic (or heritage) culture and the host (dominant) culture in either a unidimensional or bidimensional fashion (Tsai, Chentsova-Dutton, & Wong, 2002). In contrast, Berry et al.’s acculturation model involves ethnic (heritage) identity and a willingness to interact with members of other ethnic groups (rather than host culture identity). Furthermore, adolescents are likely to be at a relatively early (unexamined or exploratory) stage of ethnic identity and have greater opportunities to interact with other ethnic group members in ethnically diverse environments than those typical of adults (Phinney, 1993). For these reasons, the extrapolation of Berry et al.'s model to adolescents is of particular interest.

Acculturation Research

In describing the four acculturation strategies, Berry (2001) proposed that integration would be the most, and marginalization would be the least, beneficial to adjustment. Empirical research to support these claims is mixed, especially in regard to self-esteem. In Sam’s (2000) study of immigrant adolescents in Norway, immigrant ethnic identity and Norwegian (host culture) identity were found to be positively correlated with self-esteem. However, greater preference for marginalization (but not the other strategies) was related to decreased self-esteem.

Studies based in the United States did not replicate these results. Benet-Martinez and Karakitapoglu-Ayguen (2003) found that self-esteem among Asian-American college students was positively related to American identity but was uncorrelated with Asian identity. For specific acculturation strategies, Pham and Harris’s (2001) study of Vietnamese-Americans found that greater preference for either separation or marginalization was negatively linked to self-esteem, while preference for integration was positively linked to self-esteem. To account for these inconsistencies, the present study argues that the measure of self-esteem in existing acculturation research only addresses personal, but not group level, self-esteem.

Acculturation research and measures have also focused primarily on ethnic minorities, including immigrants, sojourners, and members of nondominant ethnic groups. Although this emphasis is justified by noting the greater impact of acculturation contact on the adjustment of ethnic minorities relative to the dominant or host culture group, the notion of acculturation among all interacting groups is to the forefront of recent studies. For instance, some researchers (Berry, 2001; Bourhis, Moise, Perreault, & Senecal, 1997) have theorized similar, but not identical, acculturation strategies for dominant group members. However, these dominant group’s strategies are typically operationalized as beliefs about how minority groups should acculturate, but not how intergroup interactions change dominant group members. In contrast, Molina et al. (2004) and Wittig and Molina (2000) have focus on the notion of mutual acculturation, wherein sustained intergroup contact influences change in both dominant and non-dominant groups. According to this conceptualization, there is potential for all ethnic groups in contact to experience some degree of acculturation, albeit asymmetrical (due to differences in social, political, and economic experiences, among others). For a further review on acculturation psychology, including topics concerning the absence of ethnic majority group acculturation research, the lack of support for a best or least adaptive strategy, and the limitations of the fourfold model, see Rudmin (2003).

Among the measures designed to assess Berry et al.’s acculturation dimensions, Phinney’s (1992) Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM) is unique insofar as it was originally developed as an assessment of both ethnic identity and outgroup (other-group) orientation for adolescents and young adults across all ethnic groups. The MEIM has subsequently been used as a measure of mutual acculturation (Molina et al., 2004; Wittig & Molina, 2000) and found to correlate with other assessments of acculturation dimensions (Phinney, Cantu, Kurtz, 1997; Cuellar, Nyberg, & Maldonado, 1997). Despite the notoriety of the MEIM as an ethnic identity measure, the present study retained the outgroup orientation component of the scale because it was specifically developed and validated as an assessment of this dimension of Berry et al.’s (1986) acculturation model. Our approach is to employ the MEIM as our mutual acculturation measure suitable for all ethnic groups in contact, thereby emphasizing the potential mutuality of cultural adaptation.

Collective Self-esteem

Using social identity theory as the foundation, Luhtanen and Crocker (1992) argued that intergroup studies of self-esteem rely on personal identity (i.e., self-concept based on self-description and personal attributes, such as skills and abilities) and ignore that fact that intergroup behavior often involves social identities (i.e., self-concept derived from similarities with members of social groups to which one belongs). In ethnically diverse settings, identification with one’s ethnic group is often accentuated (Turner, 1985). Thus, the perception of oneself and interactions with others occur at the group level. Since acculturation research is group-oriented, personal self-esteem (PSE) measures alone may be inappropriate or incomplete.

Luhtanen and Crocker (1992) initiated the research on group level self-esteem with college students. They defined collective self-esteem (CSE) as self-esteem derived from one’s group memberships and evaluation of those groups. Collective self-esteem consists of four constructs: 1) public CSE – individuals’ perceptions of how others evaluate their social groups; 2) private CSE – personal evaluations of one’s social groups; 3) membership CSE – individuals’ attitudes towards their performance (worthiness) as a member of their social group; and 4) identity CSE – the extent to which individuals believe their social groups are important parts of their self-concept or identity.

Since collective self-esteem is similar to ethnic identity in connoting positive group evaluation, CSE is theoretically similar and linked with Berry’s ethnic identification dimension of acculturation, such that greater CSE should be related to a preference for high ethnic identity (or separation and integration strategies). For example, using a composite score of all items from Luhtanen and Crocker's (1992) Collective Self-esteem Scale, Borek’s (1998) dissertation research results showed that CSE was positively correlated to involvement with one’s ethnic identity, but not with American identity, among immigrant high school students in the United States. Contrary to Berry and colleague’s (Berry, 2001; Berry & Kim, 1988) theories regarding the benefits of integration, Borek also revealed similarities in CSE among integrationist, separationists, and assimilationists, which were each greater than marginalizationists. Despite these findings, Borek’s (1998) use of a single composite score for CSE, rather than the four individual subscales, as a dependent variable limits the interpretability of these results.

To our knowledge, there is no research on CSE and outgroup orientation. On the one hand, individuals with high regard for their ethnic group may be more comfortable pursuing intergroup interactions, or vice versa. On the other hand, higher CSE may be related to greater ethnocentricity and isolation from other groups. The present study will empirically address this issue across the four CSE constructs.

Research on CSE is also characterized by a paucity of studies with younger populations. The Collective Self-esteem Scale was developed and factor analyzed with a large sample of college students (Luhtanen & Crocker, 1992). While a few studies have used the scale with high school students (e.g., Verkuyten & Lay, 1998; Yeh, 2002), none have factor analyzed its structure for this age group.

Present Study

The present study investigates the relationship between acculturation and self-esteem at the personal and collective levels among ninth graders in an ethnically diverse high school in California. To assess acculturation dimensions (ethnic identity and outgroup orientation) and collective self-esteem, we employed selected items from the Multiethnic Ethnic Identity Measures (Phinney, 1992) and Collective Self-esteem Scale (Luhtanen and Crocker, 1992), respectively. However, because these constructs and measures have seldom been investigated in the same study or among adolescents, we first examine their factor analytic structure. The purpose of the factor analysis is to statistically distinguish ethnic identity, outgroup orientation, and collective self-esteem subscale constructs with a young population.

As past research rarely explored the relationship among these constructs, the present study investigates the direction of the relationship among acculturation dimensions and measures of personal and collective self-esteem. In addition, consistent with past research (Berry & Kim, 1988, Berry, 2001) concerning the adaptiveness of the specific acculturation strategies, we test hypotheses regarding whether individuals who are categorized as integrationists have the greatest PSE and CSE compared to all other strategies, and whether preference for the marginalization strategy results in the lowest PSE and CSE among the strategies.

Method

Participants

Participants were 427 ninth grade high school students (47% male and 53% female; Mean Age = 14.67, SD = .72) attending a large ethnically diverse, suburban public high school in southern California. The self-reported ethnicity of participants was 31% White, 21% Asian, 20% Latino, 6% African-American, and 22% Other/Mixed. The data reported in this study were collected from Cohort 1 (n = 262) and Cohort 2 (n = 165) participants at one high school during the Fall and Spring semesters, respectively, of one academic year. Among all participants, 76% were born in the United States, 21% were foreign born, and 3% unknown.

Measures

Acculturation Measures

Four items from each of the ethnic identity and other-group orientation subscales of Phinney’s (1992) Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM) were used to assess ethnic identity and outgroup orientation. Based on a full administration of the 20-item MEIM given to students three years prior to the present study, only items with the highest factor loadings for their respective factors were retained for this study (see Wittig & Molina, 2000). Students’ responses were assessed using a 7-point Likert scale. Composite scores for these measures will be created based the factor analysis results.

Four items from the Affirmation/Belonging subscale were extracted and used to tap ethnic identity: 1) I am happy that I am a member of the ethnic group I belong to; 2) I have a strong sense of belonging to my own ethnic group; 3) I have a lot of pride in my own ethnic group and its accomplishments; and 4) I feel a strong attachment towards my own ethnic group.

Four items from the Other-group Orientation subscale were used to tap outgroup orientation: 1) I like meeting and getting to know people from ethnic groups other than my own; 2) I often spend time with people from ethnic groups other than my own; 3) I am involved in activities with people from other ethnic groups; and 4) I enjoy being around people from ethnic groups other than my own.

Personal Self-esteem

The Rosenberg (1965) Self-esteem Inventory was used to assess participants’ personal self-esteem. Using a 7-point scale, participants rated their agreement with 10 questions, such as “I feel that I am a person of worth, at least on an equal basis with others.” The 10 items were averaged, with higher scores indicating greater personal self-esteem.

Collective Self-esteem

A modified version of Luhtanen and Crocker’s (1992) 16-item Collective Self-esteem Scale was used. The original wording of the items was modified to reflect CSE regarding one’s ethnic group. The measure consisted of four subscales (with four items each) regarding their Public CSE (e.g., In general, others respect the ethnic group that I am a member of), Private CSE (e.g., Overall, I often feel that the ethnic group of which I am a member, is not worthwhile), Membership CSE (e.g., I am a worthy member of the ethnic group I belong to), and Identity CSE (e.g., The ethnic group I belong to is an important reflection of who I am). Students responded to items using a 7-point scale, and composite scores for each CSE subscale will be based the factor analysis results.

Procedure

The surveys were administered at the beginning of the school semester in five “life skills/career preparation” classes taught by the same teacher. Only students with signed parental consent were allowed to participate in the anonymous survey as a classroom activity. This survey was part of a pre-post program evaluation study on the effectiveness of a prejudice reduction program (for details, see Wittig and Molina, 2000). The items used in the present study were a subset of those contained in a pre-intervention survey. A graduate student and one undergraduate research assistant administered the surveys to students in each classroom on the same school day.

Results

Factor Analysis

To test the theoretical and statistical distinction among the constructs and measures, a principal axis factor analysis with oblique (direct oblimin) rotation was performed on items tapping outgroup orientation, ethnic identity, and collective self-esteem. The number of factors chosen was based on eigenvalues (greater than 1) and a scree test. Items were considered to load on a factor if the factor loading was at least .40. Using these criteria, six factors were extracted to account for 62.02% of the variance in the items. Table 1 displays factor analysis results.

Table 1

Summary of factor analyses for ethnic identity, outgroup orientation, and collective self-esteem items (N = 362)

The four ethnic identity and four outgroup orientation items were extracted to form their respective factors. The remaining four factors derived from the putative collective self-esteem items, but were not as statistically defined as previously theorized. While the four public CSE and four identity CSE items loaded onto their respective factors, the remaining private and membership CSE items failed to load onto their expected factors. The two negatively worded membership CSE items and two negatively worded private CSE items loaded on one factor, which we renamed negative private-membership CSE. The two positively worded membership CSE items loaded onto one factor, and we maintained the name for this item. Lastly, the two positively worded private CSE items did not load on any factors, and were excluded from analyses. For all subsequent analyses, composite scores were created based on the factor analysis results. With the exception of negative private-membership CSE, higher scores indicated increased ethnic identity, higher outgroup orientation, and positive collective self-esteems.

Acculturation Dimensions

To examine the individual and interactive influences of acculturation dimensions on psychological adjustment, separate simultaneous multiple regressions were conducted for each measure of self-esteem. Table 2 displays the bivariate correlations, means, standard deviations, and reliabilities for all variables.

Table 2

Correlations, Means, Standard Deviation, and Cronbach’s alpha (N = 353)

Prior to the regression analyses, ethnic identity and outgroup orientation scores were centered on their respective means, and an interaction term was created for each regression as a cross-product of these centered variables. Table 3 displays the summary of these regression analyses. For most of the separate regressions, increased ethnic identity or increased outgroup orientation was related to greater or more positive self-esteem. Increased ethnic identity or increased outgroup orientation was related to decreases in negative private-membership CSE. For the regression predicting identity CSE, outgroup orientation was the only non-significant predictor. Among all regression analyses, the interaction term was a significant predictor for only public CSE and negative private-membership CSE. Interaction results showed that as levels of outgroup orientation increased (by 1 unit), the slope between ethnic identity and public CSE decreased (by .08). An increase in the level of outgroup orientation (by 1 unit) was also related to an increase in the slope between ethnic identity and negative private-membership CSE (by .11).

Table 3

Summary of regression analyses predicting the five measures of self-esteem (N = 353)

Acculturation Groups

To examine differences among Berry’s four acculturation strategies, ethnic identity (EI) and outgroup orientation (OO) scores were subjected to median splits. The median for OO was 6.00 and for EI was 5.50. Dichotomizing EI and OO thereby reduced the total number of participants to 355. Combining the dichotomized groups formed four acculturation strategies: integration (n = 103), assimilation (n = 83), separation (n = 70), and marginalization (n = 97). We believe that this is the most parsimonious analytical technique to categorize participants and ensure relatively equal acculturation group sizes for meaningful comparisons (for further discussion, see Ward & Rana-Deuba, 1999).1

To test whether the ethnic groups were proportionately represented in each acculturation strategy, a 4 (acculturation strategies) x 5 (ethnicity: Whites, African-American, Latino, Asian, and Other/Mixed) chi-square test for independence analysis was performed. Results showed that ethnic groups were not categorized differently into the four acculturation strategy groups, χ2 (12) = 18.20, p = .11. These results suggest that, in ethnically diverse contexts, mutual acculturation strategies are employed similarly by all ethnic groups. This result also justifies our decision to combine the data across all ethnic groups for the next set of analyses, and supports the mutual acculturation theorizing (Berry, 2002; Molina et al., 2004).2

A one-way between-subjects multivariate analysis of variance was performed on five measures of self-esteem (personal self-esteem, public, negative private-membership, membership, and identity collective self-esteem) by acculturation strategy groups. Linearity, multicollinearity, and homogeneity of variance-covariance matrices assumptions were satisfied, Box’s M = 68.69, approx F (45, 257655.7) = 1.49, p = .02. Results of the MANOVA showed that the linear combination of self-esteems was significantly different among the acculturation strategies, Pillai’s Trace = 0.37, F (15, 1041) = 9.83, p < .001, partial η2 = .12.

All subsequent one-way univariate analyses for each self-esteem measure revealed significant differences among acculturation strategies. That is, results showed that acculturation strategy groups differed in their personal self-esteem [F (3, 349) = 11.97, p < .001, partial η2 = .09], public [F (3, 349) = 8.88, p < .001, partial η2 = .07], identity [F (3, 349) = 14.51, p < .001, partial η2 = .11] membership [F (3, 349) = 39.30, p < .001, partial η2 = .25] and negative private-membership collective self-esteem [F (3, 349) = 13.68, p < .001, partial η2 = .11]. Subsequent Scheffé pairwise comparisons on self-esteems among acculturation strategies were then performed. Table 4 displays the means, standard errors, and Scheffé post hoc results.

Table 4

Scheffé Post Hoc Analyses of Mean (Standard Error) Differences in Self-esteem Measures among Acculturation Strategies (N =353)

Personal Self-esteem

Scheffé results show that although individuals who prefer the integration strategy had the highest PSE among the acculturation groups, integrationist were only significantly higher than separationists and marginalizationists (but not assimilationists). Displaying the reverse trend, marginalizationists had the lowest level of PSE among the four acculturation groups. Although they displayed significantly lower PSE than assimilationists and integrationists, marginalizationists were not significantly lower than separationists beyond this study’s only non-significant trend (p = 19). No other significant differences were found.

Collective Self-esteem

Results for public CSE showed that integrationists did not significantly differ from assimilationists or separationists. On the other hand, marginalizationists had significantly lower public CSE than integrationists, assimilationists, and separationists. No other significant differences were found.

The pattern of results concerning negative private-membership CSE mirrors that for public CSE. Results showed that integrationists did not significantly differ from assimilationists or separationists on this measure. In addition, marginalizationists had significantly higher negative private-membership CSE than integrationists, separationists, and assimilationists. No other differences were found for this construct.

Results for identity CSE showed that integrationists had significantly higher scores than assimilationists but did not differ from separationists. Second, separationists were significantly higher in identity CSE than assimilationists. Lastly, marginalizationists had significantly lower identity CSE than integrationists and separationists. No other significant differences were found. Results for membership CSE were identical to those of identity CSE. First, integrationists showed significantly higher membership CSE than assimilationists but were not different from separationists. Second, separationists displayed significantly higher membership CSE than assimilationists. Third, marginalizationists had significantly lower membership CSE than integrationists and separationists. No other significant differences for identity CSE were found.

Discussion

The present study is the first with adolescents to 1) theoretically and statistically distinguish the constructs of ethnic identity, outgroup orientation, and collective self-esteems, and 2) demonstrate connections among Berry et al.’s (1986) acculturation model and adolescents' personal and collective self-esteem.

To begin, the study found a strong distinction among Berry et al.'s acculturation dimensions of ethnic identity and outgroup orientation and collective self -esteem among high school students. Because the acculturation scale we employed was originally developed for high school and college populations (Phinney, 1992; Ponterotto, Gretchen, Utsey, Stracuzzi, & Saya, 2003) and the selected items used were based on a previous study (Wittig & Molina, 2000), the stability and distinction between the ethnic identity and outgroup orientation constructs were expected. More importantly, our study demonstrates that items assessing ethnic identity and outgroup orientation, respectively, are statistically distinct from all four collective self-esteem constructs despite any theoretical similarities.

While the stability of the ethnic identity and outgroup orientation constructs was unambiguous, the distinctiveness of the collective self-esteem subscales among our high school students was not as clear as originally found with adult populations (Luhtanen & Crocker, 1992). Items for public and identity CSE loaded on their respective factors. For public CSE, adolescents may understand how others think about their ethnic group from exposure to family, friends, and the media, and this may partially explain the similarity between adolescents and adults for this factor. This interpretation needs to be tested directly. For identity CSE, the focus should be its distinctiveness from the ethnic identity measure. The fact that we demonstrated ethnic identity and identity CSE as separate constructs reflects the multiple dimensions of ethnic identity: the former was developed as a cognitive measure and the latter as an affective assessment.

The factors that emerged from the private and membership collective self-esteem items were not as easily interpretable. The results showing that only negatively-worded private and membership items loaded onto a single factor, and not negatively-worded items from the other two subscales, suggests that their commonality is not due to the wording. Instead, eliciting adolescents' responses to negative statements about personal beliefs concerning their ethnic group and negative feelings about being a member of that group may be linked. From another perspective, adolescents may have difficulty distinguishing between their negative personal feelings about their ethnic group and the negative feelings about their worthiness as a group member. In contrast, positive statements or feelings about ethnic group membership are a separate construct.

After distinguishing among these constructs, we found strong relationships among the acculturation dimensions and each measure of self-esteem. Regression results suggest that ethnic identity is generally linked to self-esteem at the personal and collective levels. While previous studies on the relationship between ethnic identity and personal self-esteem produced mixed findings (Benet-Martinez & Karakitapoglu-Ayguen, 2003; Pham & Harris, 2000; Sam, 2000), the present study found that ethnic identity is positively linked to personal self-esteem, even after controlling for outgroup orientation and the interaction term. With respect to collective self-esteem, this study showed that individuals with higher ethnic identity believe that others have more positive views about their ethnic group (i.e., higher public CSE). We also found that high ethnic identity is associated with greater feelings regarding the importance of ethnicity to one’s self-concept (i.e., identity CSE) and worthiness as an ethnic group member (i.e., membership CSE). Conversely, higher ethnic identity was also linked to fewer negative attitudes towards one’s ethnic group (i.e., negative private-membership CSE). The fact that we assessed ethnic identity at the cognitive level may account for this constructs’ factor analytical distinction and correlations with affective forms of ethnic identification.

With regard to outgroup orientation, we found that one’s willingness to interact with other ethnic group members is related to personal self-esteem as well as to public, membership, and negative private-membership CSE, even after controlling for ethnic identity and the interaction term. Higher outgroup orientation was found to be associated with higher personal self-esteem, higher public CSE, higher membership CSE, and lower negative private-membership CSE. One explanation for these results is that contact with outgroup members allows individuals to expose others to their ethnic group, thus providing a positive forum for sharing ethnic and cultural information. Students may also observe how others participate as members of their ethnic group, and become motivated to do likewise. Furthermore, it is possible that individuals with positive personal and collective self-esteems (i.e., individuals who are comfortable with themselves and their ethnicity) are more likely to seek relationships with members of other ethnic groups. Again, these interpretations and direction of causality need to be empirically tested.

Results for the interaction term coefficients revealed a moderating role of one acculturation dimension on the relationship between the other acculturation dimension and the constructs of public or negative private-membership CSE. From one perspective, our study showed that increases in the level of outgroup orientation were related to 1) decreases in the positive relationship between ethnic identity and public CSE, and 2) increases in the negative relationship between ethnic identity and negative private-membership CSE. Likewise, the moderating role of ethnic identity may also 1) decrease the relationship between outgroup orientation and public CSE, and 2) increase the negative relationship between outgroup orientation and negative private-membership CSE.

Examining Berry et al.’s (1986) acculturation model, the hypotheses regarding the benefits of integration and the detriments of marginalization were partially supported. First, integrationists shared similar levels of some type of personal or collective self-esteem with either assimilationists and/or separationists. Results showed that integrationists and assimilationists shared similar high levels of personal self-esteem, public CSE, and negative private-membership CSE; in addition, integrationists and separationists were similar in levels of public and negative private-membership CSE. The only consistent difference was that integrationists displayed higher personal and collective self-esteems than marginalizationists. These results suggest that strategies with high ethnic identity, high outgroup orientation, or both may provide resources for esteem-maintenance, especially compared to marginalizationists who are low on both.

Second, adolescents who adopt a marginalization strategy were generally less well-adjusted than those using any other strategies, especially compared to integrationists, on measures of public and negative private-membership CSE and, to a similar degree, on personal self-esteem. Compared to the other three strategies, our findings show that adolescents who adopt marginalization believe that public opinion and personal beliefs about themselves and their ethnic group are generally negative. Marginalizationists may have chosen this strategy because they 1) have accepted others’ low opinion of their ethnic group, 2) may be reluctant to identify with their low status group, and/or 3) may be hesitant interact with other ethnic groups who may hold negative opinions (Phinney, Lochner, & Murphy, 1990). Empirical studies on these possibilities would contribute to the acculturation and CSE literature.

In addition, although they generally reported significantly lower levels of self-esteems, marginalizationists also shared similar levels of identity and membership CSE with assimilationists, and showed a non-significant trend difference with separationists for personal self-esteem. Though the role of outgroup orientation should not be discounted, these results suggest that marginalizationists and assimilationists’ lack of ethnic identity may explain their similarities in identity and membership CSE.

In general, our results address growing concerns regarding the advantages and disadvantages of one acculturation strategy over others. Consistent with acculturation research with personal self-esteem (Sam, 2000) and collective self-esteem (Borek, 1998), there were no clear distinctions among integrationists, separationists, and assimilationists in terms of self-esteem measures, while marginalizationists were the most disadvantaged. These findings generally suggest that the ethnic identification process, as well as openness to interaction with other ethnic groups, may provide adolescents with the social and psychological resources for maintaining personal and collective self-esteem in the face of challenges that arise in ethnically diverse school settings. Although Phinney et al. (1990) suggested that the dual focus of the integration strategy (focusing on one’s own culture and the mainstream culture) may lead to stress as cultural values clash, results of the present study show that integration is as consistent with personal and collective self-esteem as are the assimilation and/or separation strategies. Instead, marginalizationists (who, by definition, disengage from both the ethnic identification process and from interaction with other ethnic group members) appear to be the most vulnerable.

The present study has at least four limitations. The first concerns Phinney’s (1992) Multiple Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM) because we only employed selected items from Affirmation/Belonging subscale and the Other-group Orientation subscale (see Wittig & Molina, 2000). Therefore, we acknowledge that the ethnic identity items were attitudinal and the outgroup orientation items were primarily behavioral. One solution is for future studies to assess ethnic identity via behavioral means and use attitudinal items for outgroup orientation. The dimension of outgroup orientation also had some ambiguity regarding the meaning of outgroups. While outgroups are primarily ethnic minority groups for White participants, outgroups may refer to other minority groups (including pan-ethnicities) as well as majority groups for ethnic minority participants (e.g., Asians, Latinos). The choice of outgroups for participants raises such issues as social status and dominance that may influence the results. Future acculturation studies should specify a particular outgroup(s) or have participants identify their reference outgroup.

A second limitation concerns the use of median splits. Despite the advantages stated earlier, median splits reduce sample size (thus statistical power), disregard the heterogeneity of individuals within categories, and ignore the possibility of misclassification of some individuals (MacCallum, Zhang, Preacher, & Rucker, 2002). Future studies should employ more sophisticated analyses (e.g., latent class analysis) or larger sample size to address such criticisms.

A third limitation regards testing causal relationships. While differences in personal and collective self-esteems were found, the direction of causality among strategy preferences and outcomes cannot be inferred. As stated earlier, psychological well-being could lead to, or be a result of, the acculturation strategy. Another possibility is the influence of unmeasured third variables (Moyerman & Forman, 1992).

Since adolescents were the primary focus of our study, the fourth limitation involves issues of generalizability. Because adolescence and the high school environment are often associated with ethnic identity exploration (Phinney, 1993), the results of the present study may not be representative of older adolescents or adults. Some researchers (Leong & Chou, 1994; Phinney, 2002) have conceptually linked ethnic identity development and acculturation. For example, Leong and Chou (1994) have suggested that early or unexamined stages of ethnic identity development mirror an assimilation strategy, as adolescents attempt to become part of the larger society and deny their own ethnicity. During the ethnic identity search phase which parallels the separation strategy, adolescents become more immersed in exploring their ethnicity and reject the larger society. Finally, as they achieve an ethnic identity or adopt an integration strategy, individuals learn to value both their ethnicity and the larger society. From this perspective, acculturation strategies have components that conceptually overlap with ethnic identity development. Future research should assess the extent that age and status of ethnic identity development plays a role via cross-sectional or longitudinal methods. Additional strategies should compare a wider spectrum of participants (including immigrants and native born), and use multiple measures for ethnic identity development and acculturation frameworks.

In conclusion, the present study examined the relationship of acculturation processes to personal and collective self-esteems among adolescents in an ethnically diverse context. The results clarified some of the sources of theoretical and empirical inconsistencies in the literature regarding the relationship between acculturation and self-esteem. By examining self-esteem at both the personal and collective levels, we showed that the adaptiveness of acculturation strategies differs, depending on which aspect of self-esteem is being predicted, and these differences do not point to an absolute adaptive or maladaptive strategy.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the National Institute of Health Bridges to PhD Scholarship to Michael T. Giang. In addition, this research was supported in part by NIHGM MBRS SCORE (NGA—S06GM48680-09) to the Michele A. Wittig.

Footnotes

1A scalar midpoint approach was also used but the resulting unequal categorization of participants into acculturation strategy groups did not permit further meaningful comparisons: 344 integrationists, 47 assimilationists, 7 separationists, and 0 marginalizationists.

2To address potential concerns regarding ethnic group and acculturation strategy interactions, an additional 4 (acculturation strategies) x 5 (ethnicity) MANOVA was conducted. Results revealed significant multivariate and univariate main effects of acculturation strategy, with Scheffé post hoc comparisons that were generally identical to the one-way MANOVA. Multivariate and some univariate main effects of ethnicity were also found; the only significant Scheffé post hoc differences showed that Asians had significantly lower PSE than Whites and African-Americans, and lower membership CSE than African-Americans. Lastly, no significant interaction effects at either the multivariate or univariate levels were found.

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