Unraveling Ethnic Density Effects, Acculturation, and Adjustment: The Case of Russian-Speaking Immigrants From the Former Soviet Union

Abstract

There has been limited advancement in the empirical literature unpacking the ethnic density effect, a social ecological phenomenon that may help explain some of the conflicting findings in bidimensional acculturation research. In this study, we developed a brief measure of perceived ethnic density in a community sample of in Montreal, Canada, finding it to be a superior predictor of distress to objective linguistic density. Acquiring social support partly mediated the relation between perceived ethnic density and lower distress. Furthermore, the relation between heritage acculturation and distress was double moderated by perceived ethnic density and time lived in the neighborhood. A person-ecology match involving heritage acculturation and ethnic density was related to better psychological adjustment for participants who

Heritage Acculturation Is Associated With Contextual Factors at Four Different Levels of Proximity

“…Birman et al (2005) and Miller and colleagues (2009) both also found a positive association in the United States, but they relied on an objective, census-based measure of ethnic density. In contrast, Jurcik and colleagues (Jurcik et al, 2015;Jurcik et al, 2013) used a subjective measure of ethnic density and did not detect any association with heritage acculturation in Canada (although their subjective measure correlated with an objective indicator of ethnic density). Instead, they found that subjective perceptions of ethnic density interacted with heritage acculturation in the prediction of psychological adjustment.…”

“…A third question, also identified by Schachner and colleagues (2017; and discussed by Jurcik et al, 2015), concerns interactions among contexts at different levels. Considering the acculturating person in context as a single multilevel dynamic system (Ryder et al, 2011) suggests that contextual factors may not act in a simply additive fashion.…”

“…Ten triplets of items with mirror wording form three subscales assessing heritage acculturation (VIA-H; α = .92), English–Canadian acculturation (α = .87), and French–Canadian acculturation (α = .88). Following usage in past research (e.g., Jurcik et al, 2015) and recommendation by the scale’s first author, mainstream acculturation (VIA-M) was operationalized as the highest score between English–Canadian and French–Canadian scores (e.g., if a participant obtains a score of 7.5 for English–Canadian acculturation and 6 for French–Canadian acculturation, his VIA-M score will be 7.5). An example item is “I am comfortable working with people from my heritage cultural group.” Past research has shown the VIA to be a valid and reliable acculturation self-report measure (Huynh, Howell, & Benet-Martínez, 2009; Kang, 2006; Ryder et al, 2000).…”

“…Participants indicated what percentage of people in their neighborhood, in their estimation, are of the same heritage cultural background than themselves, using the following four levels: less than 10%, between 11% and 50%, between 51% and 75% , and more than 75% . Perceived heritage density has been found to be positively associated with objective density based on census data (Jurcik et al, 2015). This variable was dichotomized into less than 10% and more than 10% bins, to form reasonably even categories.…”

A Multilingual Integrative Review of Health Literacy in Former Soviet Union, Russian-Speaking Immigrants

“…Language proficiency, acculturation, health beliefs, prior experiences, and cultural norms are important factors related to health literacy and health outcomes in immigrants in general as well as in FSU immigrants [ 44 , 45 , 61 , 76 , 77 ]. In addition, FSU immigrants may experience difficulties associated with relocation and acculturation, despite high educational attainment and similarity among the racial majority of many settings [ 69 , 78 , 79 , 80 , 81 ]. For instance, even after controlling for education and other demographic factors, middle-aged FSU immigrant women in Israel were significantly less likely to be knowledgeable about heart disease than long-term Israeli Jews [ 82 ].…”