Research examining how cultural factors affect adjustment of ethnic minority individuals would be strengthened if study samples better represented the diversity within these populations. To recruit a representative sample of Mexican American families, the authors implemented a multiple-step process that included sampling communities to represent diversity in cultural and economic conditions, recruiting participants through schools, using culturally attractive recruitment processes, conducting interviews in participants' homes, and providing a financial incentive. The result was a sample of 750 families that were diverse in cultural orientation, social class, and type of residential communities and were similar to the census description of this population. Thus, using culturally appropriate adaptations to common recruitment strategies makes it possible to recruit representative samples of Mexican Americans.
Empirical research on biculturalism is limited, in part because of the lack of quality measures of biculturalism. The currently available measures have limitations due to scoring procedures and sampling of only a narrow range of behaviors and attitudes. We present a measure of biculturalism that captures a broader range of the bicultural experience and uses a scoring system that better represents the wide ranging levels of biculturalism that exist in the diverse population of Mexican American adolescents, mothers, and fathers born either in Mexico or the United States. The Mexican American Biculturalism Scale (MABS; 27 items) includes 3 subscales: bicultural comfort (9 items), bicultural facility (9 items), and bicultural advantages (9 items). We report on the reliability and construct validity of test scores, and confirmatory factor analyses findings for a diverse sample of 316 Mexican American families from a large southwestern metropolitan city. The MABS is available both in English and Spanish (see Appendix). The use of the scale has implications for future research studying how biculturalism is related to psychological outcomes for Mexicans/Mexican Americans.
The literature on masculinity and gender roles in American life has mostly over-looked Latino men, or has stereotyped them by means of a distorted concept of machismo. A reconceptualization of masculinity and machismo among Puerto Rican men is presented, based on a multidimensional view of their historical and current sociocultural reality. Relevant clinical and social services for Puerto Rican men are discussed and directions for future research are suggested.
The authors investigated whether scores on the Cloze procedure as a test of plagiarism would be significantly affected by the readability of text. Undergraduates were asked to either paraphrase or plagiarize legal documents. Approximately half of the participants in the paraphrase condition received documents that were difficult to read, whereas the other half received versions that were easy to read. About 2 weeks later, participants completed Cloze tests that were based on their rewritten paraphrased or plagiarized versions of the documents. As predicted, Cloze scores from the plagiarize condition were significantly lower than those from the paraphrase condition. However, difficult-to-read documents, whether they had been paraphrased or plagiarized, yielded significantly lower Cloze scores than their easier-to-read counterparts. In spite of some methodological shortcomings, the results of this study suggest caution in the use of the Cloze procedure as a test of plagiarism.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.