The Relationship Between Peercultural Socialization And Acculturation Of Dai Adolescents:The Mediating Role Of Ethnic Identity

Cultural socialization is the process through which adolescences try to explore a culture and develop a sense of belonging to this cultural group.It is very important for youth to inherit and develop their ethnic culture.Parents,school and peer group are important source of cultural socialization,previous studies mainly study parents' s cultural socialization,but few studies have sought to pay attention on peer cultural socialization.In this study,we develop an scale of peer cultural socialization of Dai adolescence to explore the Structural features and occurring situations of peer cultural socialization.With the change of social culture as well as their prominent ethnic identity,minority youth are facing with prominent problems of ethnic identity and acculturation.Based on this situation,this study also seeks to explore the relation model which peer cultural socialization intact with etnic identity and acculturation,and then to reveal its influence path.The purpose of study 1 is to explore the characteristics of different types of peer cultural socialization as well as its occurring situations,in order to construct the dimensional structure of the scale of cultural soialization,provide references for developing the formal scale in study 2.We make an open-ended questionnaire survey,using reports from 193 Dai junior high school students and 41 Dai college students.The conclusion of analysis suggests that Dai adolescents mainly convey three types of cultural socialization messages between their peer groups,namely cultural makers,cultural attitude,cultural practice,which includes ethnic customs,ethnic arts,ethnic markers,ethnic language and characters as well as calendar,ethnic personality and ethnic values.In study 2,we developed an conduct an investigation to 434 Dai adolesence which contains 434 valid samples,by using the scale of peer cultural socialization ofDai adolescence and MEIM developed by Phinney.Data were randomly divided into two parts for factor analysis.Results showed that peer cultural socialization of Dai adolescents contains for factors,namely cultural makers,cultural attitude,cultural practice and ethnic historical knowledge,the rate of the factor's contribution is64.59%.Results of the confirmatory factor analysis showed that the scale of Dai adolescents which contains four factors can fitting with the data collected in this study,the fitting index reached the requirements of psychological measurement.Correlation coefficient betwween the total score of peer cultural socialization and the total score of ethnic identity is 0.591.Score of each dimension of peer cultural socialization are correlated with the total scora,the correlation coefficient is between 0.739 ~ 0.856.In study 3,the scale of peer cultural socialization,ethnic identity scale,acculturation scale were used to research the relation among peer cultural socialization,etnnic identity and acculturation of Dai adolescents.The results shows that:(1)The frequency of peer cultural socialization's transmission is quite high on overall.(2)Peer cultural socialization is related positively significantly with ethnic identity and its every dimension,various dimensions of Peer cultural socialization is also related positively significantly with ethnic identity and its every dimension.Acculturaltion and its different dimensions also showed significant positive correlation with cultural socialization.Each dimension of Cultural socialization showed positive correlation with each dimension of acculturation.the correlation coefficient between the familiarity with Chinese and cultural symbol as well as ethnic identity achievement is low,and have not reached significant level.(3)Cultural socialization had a significantly indirectly influence on acculturation via ethnic identity.The path coefficient between Cultural socialization and ethnic identity,ethnic identity play a complete mediating role in the influence path between cutural socialization and acculturation.To sum up,the study obtains several conclusions:(1)peer cultural socialization has a multilevel structure which contains four dimensions,namely cultural symbol,cultural attitude,ethnic historical knowledge and cultural practice.(2)the scale of peer cultural socialization meets the criteria of an effective measurement tool and can serves as an investigative tool for effectively test.(3)Cultural socialization had positive influence on acculturation,ethnic identity play a complete mediating role in the influence path between cutural socialization and acculturation.Cultural socialization can improve acculturation via ethnic identity.