Keeping one’s heritage culture while adapting to the majority culture is a balancing act that psychologists call acculturation. A study from Malaysia has tested a questionnaire designed to measure how people strike that balance in a society where Malay culture is dominant.
The study, published in The Open Psychology Journal, was led by Norlyiana Samsuri with colleagues including Nasir Yusoff of the Department of Neurosciences at Universiti Sains Malaysia. It examined the English version of the Vancouver Index of Acculturation.
Acculturation describes how people adjust when they live among a different culture. The Vancouver Index looks at two separate processes: holding on to one’s heritage culture and adopting the practices of the mainstream or host culture.
The authors note that Malays make up more than 50% of Malaysia’s population, while Chinese and Indian communities, formed through migration that is believed to have begun as early as the 15th century, are the second and third largest groups. The researchers wanted to know whether the questionnaire works in this setting.
A total of 236 people took part, including 136 non-Malaysians and 100 Malaysian non-Malays. Their average age was about 25, and 127 were women. The Malaysian non-Malays were of Chinese and Indian heritage, and all participants were recruited through social media advertisements.
Participants rated 20 statements on a scale of one to nine. Ten statements covered heritage culture and 10 covered mainstream culture, and a randomly selected group completed the questionnaire a second time to check its stability.
After analysis, the final version kept 10 items. Eight related to maintaining heritage culture and two related to adapting to mainstream Malay culture.
Both parts showed good internal consistency. The heritage section was highly stable when repeated, while the mainstream section showed moderate stability.
The questionnaire also picked up clear differences between groups. Malaysian non-Malays and non-Malaysians scored differently on both heritage and mainstream culture, which suggests the tool can distinguish between people with different levels of cultural adaptation.
The authors say the results point to two processes happening at once among non-Malays in Malaysia. People may keep strong links to their own heritage while also adapting in some ways to the majority culture.
The study has limits. Only two items remained to measure mainstream adaptation, and the authors acknowledge that various ethnic groups were not well represented and that the questionnaire needs further testing against other psychological and behavioural measures.
Further work with larger and more varied groups would help confirm the findings. Even so, the authors suggest the questionnaire has potential for measuring acculturation in a predominantly Malay setting.
The authors say the results support the view that acculturation has two separate dimensions, and that the items kept show acceptable consistency and stability over time.
