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 women's adherence to BSE frequency guidelines. Findings from this study raise the possibility that specific aspects of acculturation may better explain specific health behaviors.