Data mining decision tree models of multicultural acceptability of multicultural adolescents in Korea: Focusing on language skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing) of Korean and mother's native languages

Abstract

Objectives: There have been no studies of the association between multicultural acceptance and Korean language proficiency in the studies of cross-cultural and multicultural families. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the effects of both Korean and foreign languages (multicultural mother's native language) skills as factors that influence multicultural acceptance among multicultural adolescents. Methods: A decision tree analysis was conducted to examine the relationship between language skills (Korean and foreign languages) predicting multicultural acceptance among 1,439 (2012 yr. 11 years old) and 1,238 (2015 yr. 14 years old) multicultural adolescents in MAPS (Multi-cultural Adolescents Panel Survey) by the NYPI (National Youth Policy Institute). Results: For multicultural adolescents who are 11 years old and in the fifth grade of elementary school, the ability of multicultural adolescents to speak Korean and the ability of mothers to write in Korean predict multicultural acceptability. And for multicultural adolescents who are 14 years old and in the second grade of middle school, the ability of foreign mothers to listen to Korean language and the ability of multicultural teenagers to listen to Korean language acted as variables to predict the multicultural acceptance. Conclusion: It is not by foreign language proficiency that we embrace multiculturalism, but by the Korean language ability of multicultural adolescents and the Korean language proficiency of minority multicultural subjects (mother of multicultural families) that are the main influences in this study. However, these findings may be unique to Korea's multicultural society, where marriage immigrants account for a majority, so there is caution in interpreting the results.