Acculturation attitudes and sociocultural adjustment of sojourner youth inIsrael

Among 300 Jewish sojourner youth (age range: 15-18 years) from the Russian Federation, the authors investigated associations of acculturation attitude s, measures of sociocultural adjustment, and length of the encounter with t he host society, Israel. All the youth were participating in a 1-3-year pro gram of high school studies in Israel. In the light of J. W. Berry's (1997) acculturation model, the authors examined the assumptions that the partici pants' adjustment to Israeli society would require readiness to abandon som e of their previous identity and to adopt elements of a new identity charac teristic of the host society. Lower degrees of separation and higher degree s of integration were positively linked with measures of sociocultural adju stment. The adjustment scores tended to decrease over time spent in Israel.