Acculturation and eating disorder symptoms in adolescent girls

We examine the relation between acculturation and eating disorder symptoms in a normative sample of 920 adolescent girls of high schoolage. Results in dicate that acculturation is positively associated with structured-intervie w defined partial syndrome eating disorders in Hispanic girls (13.6% vs. 0% prevalence rate in more acculturated vs, less acculturated Hispanic girls) , but not Asian or European American girls. There was no relation between a cculturation and either weight concerns or body dissatisfaction across the 3 ethnicities. This study demonstrates that level of acculturation, as meas ured by language spoken at home and time lived in the United States, may in fluence rates of eating disorders in Hispanic adolescents but not in Asian adolescents.