Acculturation and Its Relationship to Smoking and Breast Self-Examination Frequency in African American Women

The concept of acculturation has been used to understand differences in health behaviors between and within a variety of racial and ethnic immigrant groups. Few studies, however, have examined the potential impact of acculturation on health behaviors among African Americans. The present study has two goals: 1) to reconfirm relations between acculturation and cigarette smoking; 2) to investigate the impact of acculturation on another type of health behavior, cancer screening and specifically breast self-examination (BSE). African American women (N = 66) attending an inner-city cancer-screening clinic completed study questionnaires. Results reconfirmed psychometric properties of the African American Acculturation Scale (AAAS); replicated the negative association between acculturation and lifetime smoking status; and found relations between acculturation and womens adherence to BSE frequency guidelines. Findings from this study raise the possibility that specific aspects of acculturation may better explain specific health behaviors.The present study was done as part of a dissertation submitted by the first author to The City University of New York