Department of Psychology, Loyola University Chicago, 1000 W Sheridan Rd., Coffey Hall Room 208, Chicago, IL, 60626, USA.
J Racial Ethn Health Disparities. 2019 Apr;6(2):364-370. doi: 10.1007/s40615-018-00533-0. Epub 2018 Oct 26.
Risk for obesity increases for Mexican-origin immigrants and their children upon arrival in the USA. Acculturative factors have been shown to play a role, but the significance and directionality of this relation may differ based on the method used to measure acculturation.
This study examines the cross-sectional relations between several measures of acculturation and child zBMI, as well as the 12-month longitudinal relations between these measures and child BMI (adjusted for age and gender), in a sample of 102 6- to 11-year-old, Mexican-origin youth.
Cross-sectional results indicated that two measures, greater preference for English and higher Anglo Orientation, were positively associated cross-sectionally with higher zBMI (p = 0.002 and p = 0.011, respectively). Only English language preference remained significant in longitudinal analyses (p = 0.047). Parental duration of residence and the child's number of immigrant parents were not significantly associated with zBMI cross-sectionally or BMI longitudinally.
These findings suggest that language proxy measures of acculturation present similar findings to multidimensional measures when assessing child weight and support the idea that behavioral or emotional changes that accompany integration into US culture may contribute to obesity development.
墨西哥裔移民及其子女抵达美国后，肥胖的风险会增加。文化适应因素已被证明发挥了作用，但这种关系的意义和方向可能因用来衡量文化适应的方法而异。
本研究在 102 名 6 至 11 岁的墨西哥裔青少年样本中，考察了几种文化适应测量方法与儿童 zBMI 的横断面关系，以及这些测量方法与儿童 BMI（按年龄和性别调整）的 12 个月纵向关系。
横断面结果表明，两种测量方法，即更偏好英语和更高的盎格鲁取向，与更高的 zBMI 呈正相关（p=0.002 和 p=0.011）。只有英语语言偏好在纵向分析中仍然显著（p=0.047）。父母的居住时间和孩子的移民父母数量在横断面或 BMI 纵向分析中与 zBMI 均无显著相关性。
这些发现表明，在评估儿童体重时，语言代理测量的文化适应与多维测量具有相似的发现，并支持这样一种观点，即与融入美国文化相关的行为或情感变化可能导致肥胖的发展。
