(PS7-B47) Psychometric Evaluation of the Abbreviated Multidimensional Acculturation Scale in a Treatment-seeking Sample of First-generation Immigrants

First-generation immigrants make up a substantial portion of the population within the United States (U.S.) (Budiman et al., 2020). Their experience immigrating to the U.S. can be fraught with challenges within our structured system’s, cultural and linguistic differences, among others. Yet the mental health needs of first-generation immigrants have not been prioritized nor have the unique experiences of immigrants been integrated into clinical care. The lack of culturally informed and responsive mental health practices may partially account for the lower utilization and engagement in children’s mental health services seen among immigrant populations. Culturally tailored children’s mental health services can improve therapeutic alliance, treatment retention, and family-engagement in services (Sanchez et al., 2021), but this requires valid, reliable, and brief assessment tools with which to efficiently measure family and caregiver cultural identity at the outset of treatment planning and case conceptualization. The Abbreviated Multidimensional Acculturation Scale (AMAS) is a multidimensional measure of self-reported acculturation and enculturation that has been developed and tested in community samples, but not in clinical contexts. The present study offers the first psychometric evaluation of the AMAS in a treatment-seeking sample of first-generation immigrant caregivers presenting for children’s mental health services (N=219). We conducted confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) of AMAS items to examine the long-form 24-item version with 4 subscales, and the 10-item AMAS (Calzada et al., 2009) with 4 subscales. However, due to the linguistically diverse nature of our sample, in the subset of caregivers who were multilingual or whose primary language was not English (n=191), we ran another two CFAs to clarify the structure of the scale when adding the language items to the measure. Specifically, after adding the language items, we examined the long-form 42-item AMAS with 6 subscales and the 14-item AMAS with 6-subscales. The results indicate ‘good’ global fit for both the 10-item, and 14-item AMAS compared to the longer form AMAS. Moreover, correlational analyses found support for the concurrent validity of the shorter AMAS in our treatment-seeking sample. Specifically, first-generation immigrant caregivers who had been in the U.S. longer than 5 years (r=.299, p</em>=.003), scored higher on the acculturation scales than caregivers who had been here less than 5 years. We also found those who preferred a language other than English (r=-.35, p</em>=.00) scored lower on acculturation scales compared to those that preferred English. These findings provide the first empirical support for the use of the brief AMAS as an efficient measure of acculturation and enculturation among first-generation immigrant caregivers in the context of children’s mental health care. Against a backdrop of increased calls for more culturally informed and responsive care, the present analysis suggests the brief AMAS may offer a feasible cultural assessment for guiding case conceptualization and treatment planning.