Short Acculturation Scale for Hispanics (SASH)

Abstract

The Short Acculturation Scale for Hispanics (SASH), developed by Gerardo Marín, Fabio Sabogal, Barbara VanOss Marín, Regina Otero-Sabogal, and Eliseo J. Pérez-Stable in 1987, is an empirically derived, 12-item self-report questionnaire designed to measure levels of acculturation among Hispanic and Latino populations within the United States. Designed to address the methodological limitations of lengthy, culturally burdensome assessment batteries, the SASH isolates the primary behavioral and social markers of cultural adaptation into three core psychometric dimensions: Language Use (5 items), Media Preferences (3 items), and Ethnic Social Relations (4 items). All items are scored on a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (indicating an exclusive Hispanic/Spanish orientation) to 5 (indicating an exclusive Anglo/English orientation). The scale demonstrates high internal consistency, with an overall Cronbach’s alpha of .92, and subscale coefficients of .90 for Language Use, .86 for Media Preferences, and .86 for Ethnic Social Relations. Strong construct, convergent, and criterion-related validities have been established through robust correlations with demographic indicators such as generational status, length of residence in the United States, age at arrival, and self-identification. Because acculturation significantly moderates public health outcomes, psychiatric risk, health literacy, and health-seeking behaviors, the SASH serves as a cornerstone instrument across clinical psychology, psychiatric epidemiology, medical sociology, and behavioral health research. The scale’s brevity, psychometric rigor, and linguistic equivalence across English and Spanish make it an enduring standard for cross-cultural research and epidemiological surveillance.

Keywords

Short Acculturation Scale for Hispanics, SASH, acculturation measurement, Hispanic mental health, Latino psychology, cross-cultural assessment, psychometrics, language preference, ethnic social relations, behavioral epidemiology, cultural adaptation, public health disparities, health psychology

Authors

The Short Acculturation Scale for Hispanics was formulated through an interdisciplinary collaboration among researchers specializing in social psychology, behavioral medicine, epidemiology, and Hispanic minority health. The primary authors are:

• Gerardo Marín, Ph.D.: Professor Emeritus of Psychology and former Vice Provost at the University of San Francisco. Dr. Marín is an internationally recognized expert in cross-cultural psychological methodology, social psychology, and behavioral health interventions targeted at Hispanic communities.
• Fabio Sabogal, Ph.D.: Research Psychologist formerly affiliated with the Division of General Internal Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Dr. Sabogal’s empirical contributions center on familialism, cognitive styles, and health-related behaviors among Hispanic cohorts.
• Barbara VanOss Marín, Ph.D.: Research Psychologist and Professor Emerita at the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies (CAPS) and Department of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco. Her research focuses on behavioral epidemiology, preventative health interventions, and cultural factors moderating risk behaviors.
• Regina Otero-Sabogal, Ph.D.: Behavioral scientist and Professor at the University of California, San Francisco, specializing in cancer screening disparities, healthcare delivery to underserved minority populations, and cultural competency within clinical systems.
• Eliseo J. Pérez-Stable, M.D.: Director of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and formerly Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine at UCSF. Dr. Pérez-Stable is an authority on racial and ethnic health disparities, tobacco cessation, and cross-cultural primary care.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the SASH is to provide a brief, psychometrically sound, and reliable measurement tool that captures individual variation in cultural adaptation among Hispanic populations residing in the United States. During the late 20th century, research involving Hispanic populations was impeded by the lack of standardized, validated measurement tools. Prior acculturation scales frequently suffered from two major limitations: they were either excessively lengthy (often containing dozens of items that induced participant fatigue and limited their integration into large-scale epidemiological surveys), or they had only been validated within single ethnic subgroups (such as Mexican Americans in the American Southwest), rendering them ungeneralizable to the broader, heterogeneous Hispanic community.

Marín and colleagues (1987) engineered the SASH to overcome these limitations. The instrument’s primary clinical and investigative aims include:

• Epidemiological and Behavioral Stratification: Acculturation systematically moderates a vast array of health risks and physiological outcomes, including smoking prevalence, alcohol consumption, nutritional transitions, type 2 diabetes incidence, cardiovascular risk factors, and cancer screening compliance. The SASH provides researchers with a validated metric to control for or directly examine the role of cultural transition in these health behaviors.
• Psychiatric Assessment and Mental Health Research: The scale enables clinicians and psychological researchers to investigate the immigrant paradox (the phenomenon wherein first-generation immigrants often exhibit superior mental health outcomes compared to their more acculturated, US-born descendants) and to assess acculturative stress.
• Clinical Customization and Health Communication: Administering the SASH assists health systems in determining whether patients benefit more from language-concordant care, culturally adapted cognitive behavioral therapies, or targeted health education materials.
• Methodological Parsimony: With only 12 items that can be completed in under five minutes, the scale minimizes administrative burden without sacrificing reliability or construct fidelity.

Psychological Construct

Acculturation is a complex, dynamic, and multidimensional psychological construct representing the continuous, bidirectional process of cultural and psychological change that results when individuals from one cultural background come into sustained contact with a different dominant or host culture (Berry, 1997). In the context of the SASH, the construct reflects the shift from traditional Hispanic cognitive, linguistic, and behavioral norms toward the normative expectations and cultural patterns of mainstream Anglo-American society.

The SASH operationalizes acculturation across three empirical domains, derived via rigorous factor analytic procedures:

1. Language Use (Items 1–5)

Linguistic adaptation represents the most immediate, pervasive, and objective behavioral marker of acculturation. This dimension assesses an individual’s operational linguistic competency, preferred communication medium, and internal cognitive linguistic processing across diverse developmental and environmental settings. It interrogates the languages used for reading, interpersonal speech, childhood communication, domestic life, and internal thought. Because language encapsulates cognitive frameworks, an individual’s transition from Spanish-dominant internal monologue and domestic dialogue to English-dominant communication signifies substantial cognitive and behavioral acculturation into Anglo-American structures.

2. Media Preferences (Items 6–8)

Media consumption reflects an individual’s voluntary, self-directed immersion in the cultural artifacts, narrative frameworks, and information architecture of either the heritage culture or the host culture. This dimension measures the primary language of television programming, radio broadcasts, and cinematic entertainment preferred by the respondent. Because media selection is generally unconstrained by occupational or civic necessity, it represents an uncoerced behavioral preference that often changes more rapidly than interpersonal social networks, serving as an early indicator of cultural shift.

3. Ethnic Social Relations (Items 9–12)

Ethnic social relations measure social homophily, interpersonal affiliation, and relational preferences. This interpersonal dimension investigates the ethnic composition of the respondent’s primary reference groups: close personal friends, guests at social gatherings and parties, reciprocal home visitors, and desired peer associations for their offspring. Unlike linguistic competence—which may be forced by socioeconomic necessity—the maintenance of an exclusively Hispanic social circle reflects psychological affiliation with heritage cultural norms and ethnic preservation. Conversely, an increasing proportion of Anglo peers signifies deep social assimilation.

Theoretical Framework

The theoretical architecture of the SASH is situated at the intersection of historical assimilation theories and contemporary cross-cultural psychological paradigms. Historically, sociology framed cultural change through linear, unidimensional models of assimilation, epitomized by Milton Gordon’s (1964) classical framework in Assimilation in American Life. Under this model, acculturation progresses along an irreversible continuum ranging from total retention of the culture of origin to total absorption into the dominant host society.

In designing the SASH, Marín et al. (1987) recognized the operational reality of public health research, which frequently requires a parsimonious linear metric to stratify populations along an acculturation continuum. The authors posited that while psychological acculturation affects subjective cultural values (such as familismo, respeto, and simpatía), value shifts often occur slowly and unevenly across different life domains. In contrast, behavioral domains—specifically language proficiency, media utilization, and interpersonal affiliation—exhibit high measurement reliability, strong linear trajectories over time, and stable associations with epidemiological endpoints.

The scale captures this behavioral change while accommodating the broader conceptual insights of John W. Berry’s (1997) bi-dimensional model of acculturation. Berry asserted that cultural adaptation involves two independent dimensions: (1) retention of the heritage culture, and (2) adoption of the receiving host culture, generating four distinct acculturation strategies: Assimilation, Integration (biculturalism), Separation, and Marginalization. While the SASH utilizes a unidimensional, bipolar response scale (ranging from 1 = Only Spanish/Latinos to 5 = Only English/Americans), its midpoint (3 = Both equally / About half and half) explicitly captures bicultural integration. Respondents scoring near the midpoint demonstrate functional biculturalism, comfortably navigating both Hispanic and Anglo-American behavioral systems.

Validity

The psychometric validity of the SASH has been rigorously evaluated across diverse epidemiological samples, validating its construct, convergent, discriminant, and criterion validity.

Construct and Factorial Validity

Construct validity was initially established by Marín et al. (1987) on a representative community sample of 363 Hispanic adults (principally of Mexican and Central American origin) and 228 non-Hispanic whites residing in San Francisco, California. Exploratory factor analyses revealed a clear, stable three-factor structure that accounted for 67.6% of the total scale variance. The Language Use factor accounted for the majority of the variance (54.5%), followed by Media Preferences (7.4%) and Ethnic Social Relations (5.7%). Subsequent confirmatory factor analyses across Mexican American, Cuban American, Puerto Rican, and Dominican cohorts have repeatedly supported this multidimensional configuration.

Convergent and Criterion Validity

The SASH demonstrates high convergent validity against demographic and developmental proxies of cultural exposure:

• Generational Status: SASH total scores correlate strongly and positively with generational distance from immigration (r = .65 to .72, p < .001). First-generation immigrants show significantly lower acculturation scores (means typically ranging from 1.4 to 2.2) than second-generation (means 3.0 to 3.8) and third-generation or later respondents (means > 4.2).
• Length of U.S. Residence: Among foreign-born Hispanics, scores correlate positively with the cumulative proportion of life spent in the United States (r = .50 to .61).
• Age at Arrival: Individuals who immigrate during early childhood (under age 10) consistently exhibit higher SASH scores than those arriving during adolescence or adulthood.
• Subjective Self-Identification: Scale scores differentiate individuals identifying as “Latino/Hispanic-only” from those identifying as “Bicultural/Latino-American” or “American” (F-test statistics consistently showing significant between-group divergence at p < .001).

Discriminant and Predictive Validity

Discriminant validity is supported by the scale’s ability to differentiate between ethnic behavioral patterns while remaining independent of general socioeconomic status and occupational prestige. In predictive validity studies, SASH scores have successfully predicted behavioral health variations: higher acculturation scores are systematically associated with higher smoking rates among Hispanic women, increased rates of dietary westernization, changes in alcohol use frequency, and differential engagement with primary preventive screenings such as mammography, Pap smears, and colonoscopies (Pérez-Stable et al., 2001).

Reliability

The SASH possesses robust internal consistency across general and clinical Hispanic populations:

• Overall Scale Internal Consistency: In the initial validation study by Marín et al. (1987), the 12-item scale yielded an overall Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of .92, reflecting high item homogeneity.
• Subscale Alpha Coefficients:
  • Language Use Subscale (Items 1–5): Cronbach’s α = .90
  • Media Preferences Subscale (Items 6–8): Cronbach’s α = .86
  • Ethnic Social Relations Subscale (Items 9–12): Cronbach’s α = .86
• Subgroup Stability: Reliability coefficients remain stable across demographic subcategories: Mexican Americans (α = .92), Central Americans (α = .91), and South Americans (α = .90). Gender-stratified analyses show comparable alphas for men (α = .92) and women (α = .92).
• Test-Retest Reliability: Sub-sample re-evaluations across 3-to-6-week intervals indicate high temporal stability, with test-retest correlation coefficients exceeding r = .88 for the total score and ranging from .82 to .91 across subscale scores, confirming that the scale measures a stable psychological construct rather than transient situational fluctuations.

Factor Analysis

The structural validity of the SASH was determined through both exploratory and confirmatory factor analytic approaches. In the seminal study by Marín et al. (1987), an initial pool of potential items was subjected to principal component analysis followed by orthogonal (Varimax) and oblique rotations. The latent root criterion (eigenvalues > 1.0) and Cattell’s scree test identified three distinct, highly interpretable factors that accounted for 67.6% of the common variance.

Factor Loadings (Original Marín et al., 1987 Study)

• Factor 1: Language Use (Eigenvalue = 6.54; 54.5% of variance)
  • Item 1 (Read and speak): Loading = .85
  • Item 2 (Language as a child): Loading = .78
  • Item 3 (Language at home): Loading = .86
  • Item 4 (Language thinking): Loading = .84
  • Item 5 (Language with friends): Loading = .80
• Factor 2: Media Preferences (Eigenvalue = 0.89; 7.4% of variance)
  • Item 6 (TV programs watched): Loading = .84
  • Item 7 (Radio programs listened to): Loading = .81
  • Item 8 (Movies, TV, radio preference): Loading = .82
• Factor 3: Ethnic Social Relations (Eigenvalue = 0.68; 5.7% of variance)
  • Item 9 (Close friends): Loading = .76
  • Item 10 (Parties/gatherings): Loading = .79
  • Item 11 (Persons visiting): Loading = .81
  • Item 12 (Children’s friends): Loading = .70

Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) models in subsequent investigations have consistently supported this three-factor oblique model over unidimensional alternative models. Fit indices routinely reach acceptable thresholds, including a Comparative Fit Index (CFI) > .95, Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) > .94, and Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) ≤ .06. In brief assessment contexts where item count is severely constrained, researchers frequently utilize the 5-item Language Use subscale as a stand-alone proxy for acculturation, as this factor correlates at r = .95 with the total 12-item score.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Short Acculturation Scale for Hispanics (SASH)
• Alternative Titles: Marín Acculturation Scale; 12-Item Short Acculturation Scale
• Assessment Type: Self-administered questionnaire; may also be administered via trained interviewer (in-person or telephone)
• Completion Time: Approximately 2 to 5 minutes
• Target Population: Hispanic / Latino individuals residing in the United States, aged 15 years and older
• Reading Level: 5th-grade reading level; accessible across varying educational backgrounds
• Structural Composition: 12 closed-ended items divided into three distinct subscales:
  • Language Use: Items 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
  • Media Preferences: Items 6, 7, 8
  • Ethnic Social Relations: Items 9, 10, 11, 12
• Response Anchors:
  • Items 1–8: 5-point Likert scale (1 = Only Spanish, 2 = Spanish better than English, 3 = Both equally, 4 = English better than Spanish, 5 = Only English)
  • Items 9–12: 5-point Likert scale (1 = All Latinos/Hispanics, 2 = More Latinos than Americans, 3 = About half and half, 4 = More Americans than Latinos, 5 = All Americans)
• Scoring Algorithm:
  • Total Score: Calculated by summing all 12 item responses and dividing by 12, yielding an overall average score between 1.00 and 5.00. (Alternatively, items may be summed for a total raw score from 12 to 60).
  • Subscale Scores: Calculated by averaging the items within each domain (Language Use: sum of items 1–5 divided by 5; Media: sum of items 6–8 divided by 3; Social Relations: sum of items 9–12 divided by 4).
  • Categorical Cut-Off: A mean cutoff score of 2.99 is conventionally used to establish binary categories:
    • Scores ≤ 2.99: Low acculturation (predominantly Spanish-speaking, heritage cultural orientation).
    • Scores > 2.99: High acculturation (predominantly English-speaking, Anglo-American cultural orientation).

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

• Publication Year: 1987
• Original Copyright Holders: Gerardo Marín, Fabio Sabogal, Barbara VanOss Marín, Regina Otero-Sabogal, and Eliseo J. Pérez-Stable. Published by Sage Publications in the Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences.
• Permissions and Accessibility: The scale is published in the public academic domain for non-commercial research, public health surveillance, and clinical practice. No formal licensing fees or author royalties are required for its standard educational, clinical, or academic investigative use. Commercial entities incorporating the scale into proprietary digital products or commercial diagnostic batteries should consult the original authors or copyright holder.
• Attribution Requirement: Proper scholarly citation of the original 1987 publication is expected whenever the scale is reproduced, administered, or reported in research literature.

References

• Berry, J. W. (1997). Immigration, acculturation, and adaptation. Applied Psychology, 46(1), 5–34. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1464-0597.1997.tb01087.x
• Cuellar, I., Arnold, B., & Maldonado, R. (1995). Acculturation Rating Scale for Mexican Americans-II: A revision of the ARSMA scale. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 17(3), 275–304. https://doi.org/10.1177/07399863950173001
• Davis, L. E., & Engel, R. J. (2011). Measuring Race and Ethnicity. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-6696-4
• Gordon, M. M. (1964). Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion, and National Origins. Oxford University Press.
• Marín, G., & Gamba, R. J. (1996). A new measurement of acculturation for Hispanics: The Bidimensional Acculturation Scale for Hispanics (BAS). Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 18(3), 297–316. https://doi.org/10.1177/07399863960183002
• Marín, G., Sabogal, F., Marín, B. V., Otero-Sabogal, R., & Pérez-Stable, E. J. (1987). Development of a short acculturation scale for Hispanics. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 9(2), 183–205. https://doi.org/10.1177/07399863870092005
• Pérez-Stable, E. J., Ramírez, A., Villareal, R., Talavera, G. A., Trapido, E., Suarez, L., Modiano, M., & McAlister, A. (2001). Cigarette smoking behavior among US Latino men and women by country of origin and acculturation. Ethnicity & Disease, 11(3), 440–454.
• Thomson, M. D., & Hoffman-Goetz, L. (2009). Defining and measuring acculturation: A systematic review of public health studies with Hispanic populations in the United States. Social Science & Medicine, 69(7), 983–991. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2009.05.011

Items of the Scale