Here - Tilburg University

Author and presenter
Mui, Phoebe; Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences
Title
Latent Profile Analysis:
Typologies of immigrant's acculturation attitudes: Comparing theory and data.
Abstract
Classifying people, concepts, or other entities into categories to streamline one's
thinking and perceptions, is common practice in every day life: By grouping
entities the world gains structure.
Also in scientific research such classification schemes are quite common:
think of Durkheim's four types of suicide, Jung's psychological types, or Berry's
acculturation strategies. The main advantage of such a typology is that a
theoretical reference frame for further investigations is created. However, what
is the value of such a theoretical typology in practice and how should one
classify entities into the theoretical categories based upon the available data?
Latent profile analysis [LPA] provides an initial starting point to answer these
two questions. LPA can be used as a model-based clustering procedure, grouping
entities based upon their similar properties. The model can be either entirely
data-driven or restricted to correspond to a theoretical typology. This allows for
a direct comparison between the theoretically expected typology and the
prominent categories that are put forward by the data.
LPA will be applied within the context of acculturation attitudes of
immigrants in multicultural societies. How do immigrants typically deal with their
cultural heritage and with the mainstream culture? Do they maintain their home
culture, or do they adapt their cultural practice to fit in with the host culture?
The most prominent account of acculturation is due to Berry. His model of
acculturation consists of two dimensions: cultural maintenance and cultural
change. Depending on one's relative preference along these two dimensions,
four typical acculturation strategies are possible: integration, marginalization,
assimilation, or separation.