Acculturation of Ethiopian and Somali Immigrant Adolescents

Cultural adjustment is a particular challenge to immigrant youths, who are trying to learn and achieve a new language while simultaneously dealing with developmental issues such as forming a sense of ethnic identity, assimilating to a new culture,relating to peers,and learning new role relations (Lynch, 1992). Because adolescence is a critical period of development, examining the acculturation orientation and adjustment process of adolescents is especially relevant (Yeh et al., 2003).This quantitative and a cross-sectional survey study examined the acculturation orientation of Ethiopian and Somali immigrant youths living in the Twin Cities metropolitan area of Minnesota.A volunteer sample of 60 Ethiopian and 60 Somali immigrant adolescents between the ages of 10 and 18 years old participated.The Acculturation, Habits, and Interests Multicultural Scale for Adolescents (AHIMSA; Unger et al.; 2002) was administered to these adolescents to determine four subscale scores: assimilation,integration, separated, and marginalized.A chi-square test was used to analyze subscale scores with identified variables to determine outcomes for four hypotheses.Two of the four hypotheses were rejected.