The Mexican American biculturalism scale: bicultural comfort, facility, and advantages for adolescents and adults

Empirical research on biculturalism is limited, in part because of the lack of quality measures of biculturalism. The currently available measures have limitations due to scoring procedures and sampling of only a narrow range of behaviors and attitudes. We present a measure of biculturalism that captures a broader range of the bicultural experience and uses a scoring system that better represents the wide ranging levels of biculturalism that exist in the diverse population of Mexican American adolescents, mothers, and fathers born in either Mexico or the United States. The Mexican American Biculturalism Scale (27 items) includes 3 subscales: bicultural comfort (9 items), bicultural facility (9 items), and bicultural advantages (9 items). We report on the reliability and construct validity of test scores and present confirmatory factor analyses findings for a diverse sample of 316 Mexican American families from a large southwestern metropolitan city. The Mexican American Biculturalism Scale is available in English and in Spanish. The use of the scale has implications for future research studying how biculturalism is related to psychological outcomes for Mexicans/Mexican Americans.