ARTICLES
Acculturation Strategies and Ethnic Identity as Predictors of Behavior Problems in Arctic Minority Adolescents

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ABSTRACT

Objective

To explore the effect of acculturation attitudes and ethnic and national identity on behavior problems in arctic minority adolescents in northern Norway.

Method

The Youth Self-Report, the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure, and acculturation strategies were completed by 581 indigenous Sami and 291 Kven high school students in 1994–1995, at age 15–18 years. Response rate was 85%. Behavior problems were in addition to ethnic/national identity and acculturation attitudes studied in relation to ethnicity, gender, age, socioeconomic status, parentage, ethnic language, and ethnic context.

Results

Although there were no ethnic group differences in behavior problems, the impact of ethnocultural predictors differed between ethnocultural and indigenous adolescents. Acculturation attitudes were most significant for indigenous adolescents’ mental health, and identity issues showed the strongest impact on ethnocultural peers. The study revealed significant gender differences regarding the influence of ethnocultural factors, and contextual variation among Sami adolescents with the strongest impact in contexts with low density of Sami people.

Conclusions

The significant ethnic group variations emphasize the importance of conducting both between- and within-group analysis on the impact of ethnocultural issues on behavior problems in minority adolescents.

Section snippets

Subjects

The sample consisted of 581 Sami (322 [55.4%] females/259 males [44.6%]) and 291 Kven (136 females [46.7%]/155 males [53.3%]) high school students aged 15–18 years from 21 high schools in the three northernmost counties in Norway. Response rate was 85%. Regarding socioeconomic status (SES), significantly more Kvens belonged to the upper classes than their Sami peers, whereas more Sami belonged to the primary industries (fishing, agriculture, reindeer herding) (p < .001). In the Sami group, 4.6%

RESULTS

We examined the effects of ethnicity, gender, parentage, ethnic language, and SES on the YSR main scales. Ethnicity, ethnic language, parentage, and SES had no effect on any problem scale. An overall main effect of gender occurred for Total and Internalizing Problems, with females reporting the highest problem scores (Table 1).

For each ethnic group and gender, bivariate correlations were run to examine the associations between the three YSR main scales and the predictors: acculturation

DISCUSSION

The hypothesis that marginalization and integration are related to mental health was supported in Sami males, but not in general in the other groups. Our results demonstrated a protective effect of integration while marginalization occurred as a risk factor for Sami males’ mental well-being as did separation for Sami females. As expected, national identity protected against behavior problems but only in Sami males and Kven females, and ethnic identity only in Kven females. The predictors were

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    This research was funded by the National Program of Health and Inequality and the Program for Youth Research (UNGforsk).

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