توسعه مقیاس خوداثربخشی فرهنگی برای نوجوانان (CSES-A)

We developed a cultural self-efficacy scale for adolescents (CSES-A) and tested its psychometric properties using both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Cultural self-efficacy (CSE) was defined as person's perception of his/her own capability to function effectively in situations characterized by cultural diversity. On the basis of Bandura's guideline for the development of a domain-specific self-efficacy measure, we tailored 50 items after reviewing literature about cultural competence, adolescents’ school-problems and social self-efficacy scales developed in previous studies in intercultural contexts. After pre-testing and analyzing psychometric properties of the scale, we selected 33 items. Eight hundred sixty-eight adolescents with five different cultural origins completed a set of questionnaires, including the CSES-A, internal control expectancies, general self-efficacy, academic expectancies, number of people from diverse cultures they keep in touch with, acculturation attitudes, perceived enrichment of other cultures, acculturation stress and demographic data. An EFA with MPLUS 2.14 highlighted a five-factor solution with 25 items that was supported by a subsequent CFA. The five factors were: self-efficacy in mixing satisfactorily with other cultures, in understanding different ways of life, in processing information from other cultures, in coping with loneliness and in learning and understanding other languages. The pattern of correlation with internal control expectancies, general self-efficacy and cultural variables supported the validity of the scale. CSES-A may be useful for future research on multicultural contexts, in which self-efficacy in cultural adaptation could be a fundamental variable.

Immigration is a world-wide phenomenon. In the past few years, Spain has become the most multiethnic country in the European Union (OCDE, 2006), even though immigration is a relatively new phenomenon in this country. The Ministry of Education and Science showed that immigrant students represent 8.44% of the total of non-university students (MEC, 2007). Compulsory Secondary Education in Spain is characterized by the highest level of growth in the enrolment of foreign students in the last 10 years. This growing cultural diversity in the school context makes often adolescents mix with students from other ethnic and cultural origins. This diversity can give rise to a lack of understanding and harmonic co-existence that should lead, in turn, to problems in social adaptation for students. Therefore, the growing ethnic diversity should imply an effort in educational institution aimed at promoting the functional value of the capacity to handle both one's own and others’ culture (Bandura, 2006a). In this way, Bandura's Cognitive Social Theory emphasizes the importance of self-efficacy, namely believes in one's own ability to carry out actions in a social context with the intention of achieving the desired result (Bandura, 1986, Bandura, 1992 and Bandura, 1997), as a pivotal predictor of people's behaviors. In multicultural context, Fan and Mak (1998) found out that students with greater cross-cultural self-efficacy were more likely to feel at ease and to mix with students from host society, fostering their socio-cultural adaptation. There is a general accordance in considering self-efficacy believes to be especially important in cross-cultural interactions (Bandura, 2006a; Fan & Mak, 1998; Harrison, Chadwick, & Scales, 1996; Hechanova-Alampay, Beehr, Christiansen, & Van-Horn, 2002; Li & Gasser, 2005; Tsang, 2001). In such interactions, sojourners and local residents face many barriers that hinder their effectiveness, like verbal and non-verbal communication, cultural ignorance and fear of being rejected, which make these cross-cultural interactions more stressful than communications that occur within the same culture (Church, 1982). Bandura, 1986, Bandura, 1992 and Bandura, 1997 stated that self-efficacy affects human behavior through four processes: cognitive, affective, motivational and selection. Hence, in a multicultural context, it is possible to hypothesize that people with a high level of cross-cultural self-efficacy may be more likely to succeed in their interactions and expect positive experiences than those with low self-efficacy (cognitive process). Likewise, people with high cross-cultural self-efficacy may be less likely to feel anxiety in cross-cultural interactions than those with low self-efficacy and feel more satisfaction when establishing new relationships with people from other cultures (affective process). Moreover, people with high cross-cultural self-efficacy may be more prone to have cross-cultural contacts and enjoy its benefits (motivational process). Finally, individuals with high cross-cultural self-efficacy may choose to have contact with their hosts even despite the fact that cross-cultural communication may entail to have a certain amount of cultural knowledge, language and tolerance for ambiguity (selection process). Hence, self-efficacy in cross-cultural interactions has been related to the socio-cultural adaptation of the sojourners. Tsang (2001) suggested that people who feel confident in their efficacy in managing their own lives may more actively seek new cultural experiences. Feedbacks related to their new behavior foster cultural knowledge and reduce uncertainty in future cross-cultural interactions. In the same line, Harrison et al. (1996) found that the greater the cross-cultural self-efficacy of American expatriates the more they report better adjustment in Europe. Likewise, in a longitudinal study Hechanova-Alampay et al. (2002) found that in international students general and social self-efficacy was significantly positive related to their adaptation to the new culture and negative related to their stress levels. Piontkowski, Florack, Hoelker, and Obdrzálek (2000) studied different variables related to interaction among groups (e.g., contact, self-efficacy and perception of cultural enrichment), evaluating the extent to which they may predict acculturation attitudes. For this purpose, they selected as a theoretical framework Berry's approach (1992), according to which, when two different cultural groups come into contact for a long time, they are involved in an acculturation process that entails change in each group. In this process it is assumed that members of both groups were characterized by specific attitudes concerning how this acculturation process will take place. Berry and colleagues’ (Berry & Kim, 1988; Berry, Kim, Power, Yong, & Bujaki, 1989) model of acculturation is based on the combination of two dimensions, namely intention to maintain cultural identity and intention to maintain relations with other groups, that allow to identify four acculturation attitudes: integration, assimilation, separation and marginalization. Who has an integration attitude prefers that each one maintained his/her own culture of origin, but at the same time promotes participation in the culture of the host society. Who has an assimilation attitude prefers to abandon the culture of origin, and supports inter-group contacts and relations. Who has a separation attitude prefers to maintain the culture of origin and reject contact between cultures. Finally, who has a marginalization attitude reject both intercultural contacts and maintaining the culture of origin. To sum up, researches carried out in this theoretical framework (Allard & Landry, 1992; Briones, Tabernero, & Arenas, 2005; Piontkowski et al., 2000) have shown that people with a strong belief in their general or social capability are more likely to feel prone and motivated to integrated themselves in another cultural group. On the other hand, the lower their level of self-efficacy in an inter-group situation, the more they avoid contacts with another cultural groups and prefer attitudes of separation or marginalization. Nevertheless, up to now literature concerning the measurement of self-efficacy in situations of interaction with people from different cultures or in diverse cultural contexts has involved studies characterized by measures of self-efficacy either general (Harrison et al., 1996, Hechanova-Alampay et al., 2002, Piontkowski et al., 2000 and Tsang, 2001) or too specific (e.g., nursing in Vargas, Molino, Shellman, Cantero, & Bernal, 2006), not being applicable to other populations, such as adolescents. Hence, we detected the need to create a cultural self-efficacy (CSE) measure for adolescent with diverse cultural origin. 1.1. Conceptual delimitation of the construct to be evaluated Perceived self-efficacy is not a comprehensive trait, but rather a set of domain specific self-beliefs linked to differentiated spheres of operation. Hence, scales created under the approach “the same measurement for everything” have usually low explicative and predictive value, since most of the items in this case may have little or no relevance for the domain of operation under study (Bandura, 2006b). Developing self-efficacy scales related to specific domains of functioning requires a conceptual analysis of the selected domain that could make possible to specify which aspects of personal efficacy should be measured. To our purpose, we referred to the definition of cultural competence provided by Ang, Van Dyne and Koh (2006), and Earley and Ang (2003). Earley and Ang (2003) defined cultural competence as a set of behaviors and congruent attitudes that allow people to function effectively in intercultural situations. They identified strategy or metacognition, knowledge, motivation and behavior as factors that make up cultural competence and they built a scale to evaluate them. Strategy factor referred to the extent to which people are aware of their intercultural experiences, reflecting processes they use to acquire and understand knowledge and cultural information. Knowledge factor referred to the extent to which people understand cultures are at the same time similar and different. Motivational factor referred to people's interest in experiencing other cultures and in interacting with people from different cultures. Behavior factor referred to people's capability of adapting their verbal and non-verbal behavior to different cultural contexts. This requires a flexible repertory of behavioral responses suited to a variety of situations, as well as the ability to modify one's behavior according to the characteristics of a specific interaction or a particular context. Taking as a reference this concept of cultural competence and Bandura's (1997) definition of self-efficacy, we defined CSE as the perception of one's own capability to mobilize motivation, cognitive resources and courses of action necessary in situations characterized by cultural diversity. 1.2. Aims and hypotheses The aim of this study was to construct and assess the psychometric properties of a CSE measurement for adolescents with different cultural origins. In the first stage of this study we proposed the following: a) A review of CSE and social measurements applied in cultural exchange contexts, and the identification of stressful situations that students from a different cultural origin have to deal with in the academic context. Consequently, we generated a broad set of items following Bandura's recommendations (Bandura, 2006b). b) An analysis of the psychometric properties of the scale, selecting the most suitable items to apply to the population. For this purpose, we administered the scale to a pilot sample – college students – and examined its factorial structure, internal consistency and validity. We went on to the second stage in which we proposed the following: c) An application of the CSE scale to the target sample – adolescents – (cultural self-efficacy scale for adolescents (CSES-A)), in educational environments characterized by cultural diversity, with the aim of analyzing psychometric properties of the scale: internal structure, reliability and validity. We also included different measures that made possible to perform a concurrent criterion validity analysis. A priori we did not propose any hypothesis concerning factorial structure and internal consistency of the scale. Nevertheless, the validity analysis of the instrument was guided by some general hypotheses. Since the scale has been developed after a thorough review of the existing literature and went subsequently under a process of selection of items better tapping the theoretical construct in the first stage of the study, we considered that the scale would have shown a good validity of content. As pertain to the validity of construct, we implemented both an exploratory (EFA) and a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to prove the existence of a single underlying psychological construct which gives meaning to the scores on the scale. As regards the concurrent validity, it was analyzed through CSE intercorrelation with indexes assessing closely related construct of adaptation process. CSE was expected to be positively related to the number of people from other cultures with whom contact is maintained (Tsang, 2001), perception of cultural enrichment (Piontkowski et al., 2000) and academic expectations (Hechanova-Alampay et al., 2002), and negatively related to acculturation stress (Hechanova-Alampay et al.). We also expected that the proneness to prefer the “integration” acculturation strategy would be more frequent in those with a high level of CSE (Allard & Landry, 1992; Briones et al., 2005; Piontkowski et al.). Moreover, we included the measurements of expectancies of internal control and general self-efficacy because, in accordance with Fan and Mak (1998), we expected them to be moderately and positively related to CSE, but not with cultural type variables.

The main aim of the study was to construct and validate a CSES for adolescents with diverse cultural origins. Previously, we extensively reviewed the literature, analyzing the existing measures of social self-efficacy, the concept of cultural competency and the stressors for groups involved in an acculturation process. Then, following Bandura's (2006b) recommendations, we developed an initial set of 50 items to be included in a CSE measure. After analyzing results derived by both a pilot study and a larger study including a target population of students with different cultural origins, we were able to select 25 items forming the final version of our scale. A CFA highlighted five first-order factors, namely self-efficacy in mixing satisfactorily with other cultures, in coping with homesickness and separation, in learning and understanding a foreign language, self-efficacy in processing information about other cultures, and in understanding other ways of life, tapping a second-order factor, defined as CSE. The scale showed high internal consistency and content, construct and criterion validity. The pattern of correlations of CSE and of the five first-order factors with cultural contact, perception of cultural enrichment and academic expectations, as well as the result deriving from the χ2 analysis with the acculturation strategies, supported our hypotheses on criterion validity. Hence, as other authors have sustained ( Allard & Landry, 1992; Black & Gregersen, 1991; Fan & Mak, 1998; Harrison et al., 1996, Piontkowski et al., 2000 and Tsang, 2001), the higher the level of CSE, the greater the cultural contact and the perception of cultural enrichment, the higher the academic expectations and the greater the preference they showed for an integration strategy; in short, the better adolescents’ adaptation to their academic and social context. On the other hand, the expectancies of internal control and general self-efficacy were positively related to CSE, as we expected on the basis of previous studies (Fan & Mak, 1998), but, differently from CSE, they had no relation with cultural type variables. This result in particular pointed to the relevant domain specificity of the proposed scale. However, the expected negative relation of CSE with acculturation stress was not supported by results. According to Hechanova-Alampay et al. (2002), there may be different reactions to adaptation and these may take different route in time. That is, consistently with previous findings that showed how the students’ psychological emotions rose and fell according to the academic calendar (Golden, 1973), we could hypothesize that stress levels shown by students in this study could be due to the specific academic period in which our research was conducted, rather than to the experience of being a foreign student or to cultural interaction with other students. Notwithstanding, this could be one of the limitations of this study and we suggest to further investigate the relation between stress and CSE in a longitudinal perspective. As well, we recommend caution in considering scale validity since concurrent criterion validity was only tested through the analysis of correlations with self-report measures. In particular, could be interesting to carry out studies to further investigate validity of the CSE scale and its predictive power with respect to academic and social adaptation of students. The CSES-A was created in order to guarantee multiple applications. On the one hand, the process of construction of the scale and, in particular, the great attention paid to the wording of the items may guarantee its usefulness and availability with adolescents of diverse cultural origin, nationality and residence. Moreover, the possibility of applying the entire scale or only subsets of items tapping specific factors separately can be of great interest in some studies. On the other hand, as Fan and Mak (1998) stated, students’ CSE can contribute to the prediction of their academic results and overall of their social adaptation. Hence, the scale could be useful to identify adolescents’ level of CSE in each of its facets, allowing the definition and the design of specific intervention programs (Mak & Tran, 2001), following Bandura, 1986 and Bandura, 1997 indication about strategies for increasing self-efficacy. Following Li and Gasser (2005) CSE of all students, both those from minority cultures and those native, can be increased through their active participation in monitored cross-cultural social interactions, by observing peer behavior in social contexts, requesting feedback and strengthening their own performance, and by focusing their attention on their own behavior, more than on their emotional arousal during social interactions. We consider that these interactions would favor not only students’ CSE but also their social adaptation.