Canadian or Indo-Canadian: A Study of South Asian Adolescents

Abstract

The researcher devised an acculturation scale in 1974 (Ghuman, 1975) and used it again, successfully, with a large sample of British adolescents (Ghuman, 1991). The present research was planned to investigate the acculturation attitudes of Indo-Canadian young people and to explore the reliability and validity of the scale in a different cultural milieu. One hundred boys and girls participated in the study. The sample scored very highly on the scale showing their willingness to take up the norms and values of Canadian society. However, they also wanted to retain some key elements of their parents'culture. Girls scored higher than boys, but not significantly so. The Canadian sample shows more favourable attitudes to acculturation than an equivalent British sample studied earlier by the researcher. The split-half reliability of the scale was very high indeed; the Spearman-Brown index was =0.85 and Cronbach I was 0.75. The findings of the study are discussed within a conceptual framework of assimilation-accommodation. © 1994, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. All rights reserved.