Original article
Acculturation and interrelationships between problem and health-promoting behaviors among Latino adolescents

https://doi.org/10.1016/S1054-139X(00)00162-2Get rights and content

Abstract

Purpose: To examine: (a) the effects of acculturation on a healthy lifestyle including problem behaviors (substance use and sex acts) and health-promoting behaviors (e.g., seat belt use, vitamin intake, hours of sleep per night) and (b) the interrelationships among problem and health-promoting behaviors among Latino adolescents.

Methods: Face-to-face interviews were conducted with Latino adolescents (n = 609) with questions covering the following areas: acculturation, sociodemographics, problem behaviors, and health-promoting behaviors. The participants ranged in age from 11 to 19 (mean = 15) years. Bivariate correlations and factor analyses were used to examine the relationship between problem and health-promoting behaviors. A combination of one-way analyses of variance (ANOVAs), Chi-square tests, and Student’s t-tests were used to analyze the effects of acculturation on problem and health-promoting behaviors.

Results: Higher levels of acculturation were associated with an increased likelihood of exhibiting problem behaviors and a decreased likelihood of exhibiting certain health-promoting behaviors. Foreign-born Latinos were significantly less likely to engage in problem behaviors. Problem behaviors were likely to co-occur; however, the co-occurrence of health-promoting behaviors was not evident. The results also revealed the co-occurrence of problem behaviors with selected health-promoting behaviors.

Conclusions: Among Latino adolescents, there seems to be evidence that problem behaviors and certain health-promoting behaviors do co-occur. To the extent that “healthy lifestyles” are conceptualized as the presence of health-promoting behaviors and the absence of problem behaviors, less acculturated Latino adolescents seem to fare better than those that are more acculturated. Interventions to promote “healthy lifestyles” among Latino adolescents should be tailored to take into consideration the effect of acculturation.

Section snippets

Methods

Latino adolescents aged 11 to 19 (M = 15) years were recruited from two public health clinics in Los Angeles County (n = 609, 48.8% boys). Active consent was obtained from the parents before the adolescents’ participation, with a refusal rate of 22%. Sixty-one percent of the participants requested that their interview be conducted in Spanish. All instruments were back-translated to ensure consistency between the English and Spanish versions of the survey. Approval for this study was obtained

Frequency of problem behaviors

The frequency of substance use is summarized in Table 1. As might be expected, alcohol and cigarettes were the most frequently previously used substances in this sample. However, only a small percentage (4.5%) of respondents who used alcohol reported a frequency of use of 2–6 times per week or more, whereas cigarette smokers reported a higher frequency of use (13.5% reported 2–6 times per week or more). Fifty-nine percent of the sample used none of the substances and received a score of 0 on

Discussion

We found problem and health-promoting behaviors to be associated with indices of acculturation. Increased acculturation was associated with a greater tendency to engage in problem behaviors and a decreased likelihood of engaging in select health-promoting behaviors. Cigarette smoking, alcohol use, and sexual intercourse were associated with language use and country of origin used as indices of acculturation. The finding that acculturated Latino adolescents were more likely to engage in problem

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (RO1-HL55770-02) to Donald E. Morisky, Sc.D., including supplement support for the research of Carl D. Sneed (RO1-HL55770-02S1). This research was also supported by a grant from National Institutes of Mental Health to the Center for HIV Identification, Prevention, and Treatment Services to Mary Jane Rotheram-Borus, Ph.D. (P3DMH58107). The authors thank the site coordinators Dahlia Fuentes and Debra Smith.

References (28)

  • M.J Rotheram-Borus et al.

    Prevalence, course, and predictors of multiple problem behaviors among gay and bisexual male adolescents

    Dev Psychol

    (1995)
  • J.E Donovan et al.

    Structure of health-enhancing behavior in adolescencea latent-variable approach

    J Health Soc Behav

    (1993)
  • N Moss

    Behavioral risks for HIV in adolescents

    Acta Paediatric

    (1994)
  • Youth risk behavior surveillance—United States, 1998

    MMWR Morb Mort Wkly Rep

    (1999)
  • Cited by (128)

    • Acculturation and sleep outcomes in Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders: Results from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions-III

      2021, Sleep Health
      Citation Excerpt :

      A potential reason for differences in findings may be attributed to having a Bicultural group in our study, which was not considered in previous studies. A study by Ebin et al focused on adolescent Hispanic immigrants found that both bilingual in Spanish/English and exclusive Spanish-speaking teens were more likely to report longer sleep duration than exclusive English-speakers.41 This was partially consistent with our finding in that the Bicultural group was significantly associated with more hours of sleep compared to the non-Asian group; however, the association was driven by individuals who sleep more than 9 hours within the Bicultural group.

    • Acculturation, shopping acculturation, and shopping motives of International Residential Tourists

      2021, Tourism Management
      Citation Excerpt :

      Concerning length of residence, a positive relationship is usually proposed. Instead of being a situation of short duration, acculturation is deemed to be a long-term process involving the acclimatization to the host culture (Ebin et al., 2001) and “the acquisition of skills and knowledge to engage in consumer behaviour in another culture” (Peñaloza, 1989, p. 110). Along these lines, the duration of stay in the new country has, in certain cases, been proven to positively affect acculturation (e.g. Webster & Obert-Pittman, 1993).

    • Onset of regular cannabis use and adult sleep duration: Genetic variation and the implications of a predictive relationship

      2019, Drug and Alcohol Dependence
      Citation Excerpt :

      However, we also conducted an additional analysis regarding the onset of regular cannabis use and an average of weekend and weekday sleep duration that is included in a supplement; the results mirror those for weekend sleep. Our phenotypic mixed effects regression models adjusted for covariates that have shown associations with sleep, including frequency of tobacco (Boakye et al., 2018), alcohol, (Roehrs and Roth, 2001) and cannabis use (included to separate the effects of onset of regular use from frequency of cannabis use) (Mednick et al., 2010; Glozier et al., 2010; Ebin et al., 2001; McKnight-Eily et al., 2011) which we defined as the number of days a substance was used in the past 6 months. We also controlled for sex (Krishnan and Collop, 2006) and depression (Tsuno et al., 2005) which was quantified via a composite score using responses from the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression (CES-D) scale (Radloff, 1977).

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text