ABSTRACT
Several works by Chicana/o psychologists in the late 1970s were instrumental in focusing research on Chicana/os in the developing field of psychological acculturation. The first was the introduction of the Measure of Acculturation for Chicano Adolescents (Olmedo, Martinez, & Martinez, 1978; Olmedo & Padilla, 1978), the second was the American Psychologist article entitled “Acculturation: A psychometric perspective” by Olmedo (1979), and the third was the book entitled Acculturation: Theory, Models, and Some New Findings (Padilla, 1980). This book contained several important chapters, including contributions from Padilla (1980), which had very seminal theoretical and applied influences such as the idea of acculturative typologies. These three publications led to a proliferation of measures and research on acculturation, not only on Chicana/os, but through paradigmatic measures on acculturation in any two ethnic-cultural groups. (For a selected listing of trends and a chronology of acculturation and various ethnicity measures between 1955 and 1995, see Cuéllar, 2000c, and Roysircar-Sodowsky & Maestas, 2000.)
Ethnic identity as a concept and construct was growing in parallel to the concept of acculturation. How ethnic identity and acculturation relate to each other was, and continues to be, of much theoretical interest. Clark, Kaufman, and Pierce (1976), Cohen (1978), and Padilla (1980) argued that ethnic identity was a part of acculturation phenomena or, as Cohen noted, ethnicity arises from a situation of contact between different cultural groups. Ethnic identity is often discussed in terms of what determines what. Ethnic identity models and their measurement became the focus
of acculturation research in the 1980s and 1990s. Some of the representative ethnic identity models developed were Phinney’s Ethnic Identity Development Model (Phinney, 1989), Cross’ (1991) Psychological Nigrescence Model, Helms’ (1990) Racial Identity Model, and Knight-Bernal’s Social Cognitive Model of Ethnic Identity Development (Knight, Bernal, Garza, & Cota, 1993). (Examples of ethnic identity measures were the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure or MEIM, Phinney, 1992, and the Ethnic Identity Questionnaire, Bernal, Knight, Ocampo, Garza, & Cota, 1993.)
A very significant methodological and theoretical contribution in the assessment of acculturation was made with what has been labeled variously as the “Two-culture Matrix Model” (McFee, 1968; Ruiz, Casas, & Padilla, 1977; see also Keefe & Padilla, 1987), the “Orthogonal Model” (Oetting & Beauvais, 1991), or the “Two-Dimensional Model” (Buriel, 1993). In these models, each culture is conceived as a separate axis and their interaction as forming a matrix. Each person undergoing acculturation may vary independently in his or her exposure, acceptance, rejection, or adaptation with respect to each of the two cultures. This methodological advancement led to the psychometric assessment of bicultural adaptations including forms of integration and marginalization for the first time.
