| This thesis examined differences between three conceptualizations of acculturation (i.e., contact, adoption and identification), and compared the ability of the conceptualizations to predict three different kinds of adaptation: psychological well-being, psychological ill-being, and sociocultural difficulties. The three acculturation conceptualizations yielded different distributions of participants across acculturation strategies (i.e., integration, separation, assimilation, and marginalization), and the intermeasure agreement between the three conceptualizations was poor. In regards to the predictive ability of the three conceptualizations, combining the contact and adoption conceptualizations provided the best prediction of sociocultural adaptation. However, findings varied by measure of adaptation whereby the acculturation conceptualizations predicted well-being but not ill-being; and sociocultural adaptation predicted ill-being but not well-being. These results support the growing evidence that well-being and ill-being are distinct traits rather than opposite poles of the same construct. The possibility that ill-being is a better measure for acculturation research is discussed. |
