Implications of adolescents' acculturation strategies for personal and collective self-esteem

Berry, Trimble, and Olmedo's (1986) acculturation model was used to investigate the relationship among adolescents' acculturation strategies, personal self-esteem, and collective self-esteem. Using data from 427 high school students, factor analysis results distinguished Collective Self-esteem Scale constructs (Luhtanen & Crocker, 1992) from both ethnic identity and outgroup orientation subscales of the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (Phinney, 1992). Subsequent results showed that: 1) both acculturation dimensions were correlated with personal and collective self-esteems, 2) integrationists shared similar levels of personal and collective self-esteems with assimilationists and/or separationists, and 3) marginalizationists generally had the lowest levels of personal and collective self-esteems. Implications are drawn for understanding acculturation among adolescents and for the utility of group-level measures of self-esteem.