Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

6-1982

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Psychology

Major Professor

Robert G. Wahler

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to review selected attitudes which the literature stated as belonging to the Mexican-American culture. These attitudes reflected values concerning extended and nuclear family relation-ships, male and female sex roles, the aged, fatalism and present time orientation. The study evaluated three hypotheses. First, the study determined if social class or ethnicity had the stronger correlation with the previously mentioned attitudes; second, it assessed differences with-in the Mexican-American population when those subjects were partitioned with respect to language spoken, gender, religion, social class, and self-identification. Finally, the study compared the middle-class Mexican-American group with the middle-class Anglo-American population.

The procedure involved distributing copies of a questionnaire, designed specifically for this study to students in eleven public and Catholic high schools in the Los Angeles area. Discriminant analysis factor analysis and point-biserial correlations were used to evaluate the responses of the 394 subjects.

The factor analysis resulted in eight factors. They were the following: equalitarianism, family cohesiveness, traditional dominance, traditional family support, fatalism, achievement, father's concern for the famly and rejection of the elderly. Hypothesis one found ethnicity to be more highly correlated with attitudes than economic level. Significant differences were found between the ethnic groups with regard to the first five factors listed previously.

Hypothesis two showed the existence of differences within the Mexican-American population. Due to a lack of appropriate subjects, the variables, religion and self-identification, were not included in this study. However, discriminant analysis found differences within each of the three remaining variables.

The factor analysis resulted in significant differences for the traditional family support and the traditional family dominance factors for the language groups. Significant differences for the equalitarianism and the rejection of the elderly factors were found for the gender groups. No significant differences resulted from the income groups. Both discriminant and factor analysis found differences between the Mexican- and Anglo-American middle income groups. The significant differences were found for the same five factors that were, in fact, also significant in hypothesis one, though the level of significance for some of the factors were not as high as in hypothesis one.

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