Construction and Standardization of Acculturative Stress Assessment Scale

Abstract

The present paper focuses on the standardization of the Acculturative Stress Assessment Scale (ASAS). This scale helps to find the level of adjustment in another culture by using a specific acculturation style in migrated individuals. Acculturative stress assessment scale has total 35 items with 7 sections having 5 items each. These items were selected on the basis of experts’ opinion and item analysis (correlation value). Items are scored both positively (4 to 1) and negatively (1 to 4) on 4 point scale— (Always (4), Frequently (3), Sometimes (2), and Never (1). The test-retest reliability of this scale is 0 .93 (N=100) and Cronbach alpha coefficient is a= 0.70 (N=300). Only those items were retained in scale with high correlation values and were internally consistent. So, the content validity of this scale was found to be high. The norms of this scale were established on 300 migrated adults. On the basis of norms it was found that high individual scores indicate preference for integrated acculturation style and experience less acculturative stress, and low scores indicate preference for marginalized acculturation style leading to feeling of acculturative stress.

Keywords: Acculturation, Acculturative Stress, Integration, Assimilation, Separation, Marginalized Acculturation Style

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